In addition, Prime Minister Noda ordered two reactors in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, to be restarted.
FORBES: Fukushima Slugfest -- Japan's New Nuclear Regulation Authority
Maybe this is what Fukui means when he talks about society wanting Honda to stick around.
The timing of the sale of Mr Fukui's stake earlier this year added to the brouhaha.
ECONOMIST: The case for keeping interest rates at zero evaporates
On this question, Mr Fukui and his deputies seem to be much more open to ideas.
"There are various offers for the team but we haven't seen any serious buyer, " Honda president Takeo Fukui said.
Mr Fukui's term ends on March 19th, and somehow Japan's warring political parties must settle on a successor.
While other auto chief-executives-to-be were punching keyboards in an accounting office, Fukui ran the company's motorcycle racing operations.
Mr Fukui has apologised for his actions, amid calls from ministers for him to restore the institution's credibility.
Japan's central bank governor, Toshihiko Fukui, has been heavily criticised for investing in high-risk funds run by Mr Murakami.
Mr Fukui may have better luck with the Bank of Japan's other policy goal: keeping the financial system from collapse.
The second reason is that in March the government appointed Toshihiko Fukui, a former deputy governor of the BOJ, as its governor.
That is because of the uncomfortably politicised nature of Mr Fukui's position.
ECONOMIST: The case for keeping interest rates at zero evaporates
The trick: "You need to give people the freedom to spend and the freedom to make mistakes, " says Takeo Fukui, Honda's 61-year-old president.
Especially with a finance-ministry minder next to him, Mr Fukui may now have his work cut out to preserve the central bank's independence.
An early investor in the firm, and a crucial provider of introductions, was Toshihiko Fukui, before he became governor of the Bank of Japan.
But one thing is clear: Mr Fukui will eventually raise rates in the Year of the Boar and not just once but probably several times.
After living through such a trauma, Mr Fukui is adamant that runaway investment should never again be allowed to wreak such havoc on the economy.
Even Takatoshi Ito, an economist at Tokyo University and long a critic of the bank, says that Mr Fukui is at last sending the right message.
According to the latest poll by Jiji news agency, 46% of the public is still against the move to restart the reactors in Fukui, she says.
In January, a schoolteacher was accused of dressing up in wig and skirt to take videos of women bathing at a hot spring resort in Fukui.
Honda's Chief Executive Takeo Fukui also said last week that the company may shift more production overseas to cushion the earnings impact of the yen's surge.
Though under public pressure to fire Mr Fukui, both Mr Koizumi and Chikage Ogi, the construction minister, have stuck by him, raising doubts over their commitment to reform.
"We, Honda Motor Co Ltd, have come to the conclusion that we will withdraw from all Formula One activities, making 2008 the last season of our participation, " said Fukui.
Mr Fukui has been much more enthusiastic about the policy's efficacy, and says the bank will not stop easing until year-on-year inflation has been positive for a good while.
That will give him some cover to announce the restarting of the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture, which powers the Kansai industrial region of which Osaka is the heart.
Mr Fukui also claimed the corporation did not have a full set of records to show how much it paid for earlier projects, though these too seem to have since turned up.
The authority said in a statement that it found in November that the company hadn't conducted periodic checks of about nearly 10, 000 parts of 39, 000 pieces of equipment at the 280-megawatt reactor in Fukui prefecture.
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