Masato Kanda

Masato Kanda (神田 眞人) is a Japanese bureaucrat at the Ministry of Finance. Since 2021, he has served as Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs (財務官, zaimukan), the country's top currency diplomat. Due to the yen being traded in the weakest range in the past three decades during his tenure, his remarks on the possibility of currency intervention often make news headlines, in which he is sometimes referred to as the country's 'FX Tsar'.

He was born in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, in 1965. He attended Nada Junior & Senior High School in Kobe, then went on to study law at the University of Tokyo. At the university, he learnt international politics from Yoichi Masuzoe, later Governor of Tokyo. After graduation, he started working for the Ministry of Finance. From 1989, he studied economics at St Hugh's College, Oxford, from which he graduated with an MPhil. Although most of his career has been spent at the ministry, he has also spent a few years each working for the World Bank and the OECD.