Sept 15 (Reuters) - Hirohisa Fujii, a former Japanese finance minister, has been picked for the same post in the incoming government led by Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama, Japanese media reported.
Fujii, a veteran lawmaker with conservative roots, served as finance minister briefly in the early 1990s.
Here are key facts about Fujii:
- A long-term insider at the centre of Japan's establishment, Fujii graduated from the prestigious University of Tokyo that has produced many top bureaucrats, he worked for the Finance Ministry for more than 20 years and was a lawmaker for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for more than a decade.
- He defected in 1993 with other lawmakers to form an anti-LDP coalition government, calling for political reform. He served as finance minister in that short-lived coalition from 1993 to 1994.
- Formerly head of the Democratic Party's tax panel, Fujii has called for funding soaring welfare costs from Japan's broad sales tax and for discussing increasing the tax rate, leading some market players to think he is fiscally conservative. However, his Democratic Party has ruled out raising tax in the next four years.
- Fujii has said that Tokyo should not intervene in the foreign exchange markets unless currency rates swing abnormally and that he sees no need to alter Japan's dollar holdings in its $1 trillion foreign exchange reserves, the world's second biggest after China.
- Through much of his political career, Fujii has worked closely with Ichiro Ozawa, the party's next secretary general who some see as the real power behind the scenes in the party. (Reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Rodney Joyce)