"The paper aims at explaining why the Bank of Japan has not adopted inflation targeting, despite calls for such a policy. Disclosed minutes of the Monetary Policy Meetings of the Bank of Japan, after March 1998, as well as Speeches by its members give clues to changing reasons against inflation...

It would be easy to say that central banks should consider asset prices as one of the objectives to avoid boom and bust cycles, as happened in the 2007-2009 crisis; the dotcom bubble of 2001; and the Japanese boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s. However, its implementation would be theoretically...