My speech will be based on my experience serving as Vice Minister for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance in Japan, President of the Asian Development Bank and Governor of the Bank of Japan. I. An Asian Century I would like to begin by first trying to put the word "Asia" into context.
Looking into the etymology of "Asia," one explanation is that it comes from the Akkadian word asu, which means "to go out, to rise," in reference to the sun, thus "the land of the sunrise. "1 So a couple of thousand years back, all people or cultures originating from the east were collectively classified into a single category of "Asians" or "Asia."