page_title: Takahashi Korekiyo
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Takahashi Korekiyo / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Series B 50 yen banknote. Portrait: Korekiyo Takahashi. First issued in 1951, issue suspended in 1958.
context_page_description: Viscount Takahashi Korekiyo was a Japanese politician who served as a member of the House of Peers, as Prime Minister of Japan from 1921 to 1922, and as the head of the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance.
  Takahashi made many contributions to Japan's development during the early 20th century, including introducing its first patent system and securing foreign financing for the Russo-Japanese War. Following the onset of the Great Depression, he introduced controversial financial policies which included abandoning the gold standard, lowering interest rates, and using the Bank of Japan to finance deficit spending by the central government. His decision to cut government spending in 1935 led to unrest within the Japanese military, who assassinated him in February 1936. Takahashi's policies are credited for pulling Japan out of the Depression, but led to soaring inflation following his assassination, as Takahashi's successors became highly reluctant to cut off funding to the government.
context_section_description: Takahashi appeared on a 50 Yen banknote issued by the Bank of Japan in 1951. It is the only time that a former president of the Bank of Japan has appeared on one of Japan's banknotes.
  Takahashi's Tokyo residence is now the "Takahashi Korekiyo Memorial Park" in Tokyo's Minato Ward, Akasaka. However, a portion of the building survives in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei city, Tokyo.
  Takahashi's fiscal and monetary policies during the Great Depression were in many ways similar to what Keynes later published just a few years later in 1936 in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.  It is thought but not proven that Takahashi's success contributed heavily to Keynes' theories.
  Ben Bernanke, chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, characterized Takahashi as a man who "brilliantly rescued Japan from the Great Depression", and Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe cited Takahashi as an inspiration for his Abenomics policies. On the other hand, Bank of Japan president Masaaki Shirakawa characterized Takahashi's policies of central bank support for the government as a "bitter experience", and in 1982 the Bank of Japan itself characterized Takahashi's Depression-era policies as "the bank's biggest mistake in its 100-year history".
caption: Series B 50-yen bank note of Japan
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