* BOJ should be ready to do more for job growth - Noguchi * Newcomer Noguchi known as vocal advocate of big easing * Praises BOJ’s current policy, welcomes March review of tools * Monetary policy focus is to create jobs, not help banks (Adds Noguchi’s comments on bazooka stimulus, side-effects) TOKYO, April 1 (Reuters) - New Bank of Japan policymaker Asahi Noguchi said on Thursday the central bank’s priority must be to create jobs and fire up inflation, rather than protecting financial institutions from the pain of prolonged monetary easing. A former academic known as a vocal advocate of aggressive easing, Noguchi said it was important for the Japanese central bank to prepare options in case it needs to ramp up stimulus. “If necessary to achieve price stability and appropriate level of job growth, the BOJ should surely be ready to take more action,” Noguchi told a news conference upon joining the central bank’s nine-member board on Thursday. “It’s very important to increase policy options for in case another shock hits Japan,” he said. Noguchi joins a board split between those who see room to take stronger steps to achieve the central bank’s elusive 2% inflation target, and those who are wary of the rising cost of prolonged easing. He succeeded Makoto Sakurai, who had called for the need to look more at the demerits of stimulus. For a graphic on the BOJ’s board composition, click: tmsnrt.rs/2OcV5yr CHEERLEADER OF ‘BAZOOKA’ Noguchi said the BOJ took the right step by reviewing its policy tools in March to make them more sustainable, as doing so would give the bank more ammunition to combat future shocks. But he stressed the side effects of prolonged easing shouldn’t get in the way of ramping up stimulus. “The BOJ’s policy priority should be to push up economic growth, inflation, income and jobs to an appropriate level, and sustaining that level, rather than restoring the health of financial institutions,” Noguchi said. As an academic, Noguchi has been a cheerleader of the BOJ’s “bazooka” stimulus programme deployed in 2013 and consistently called for bolder monetary steps to beat deflation. At the news conference, he praised Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s aggressive stimulus measures as ending deflation. “If there was something that didn’t quite go as intended, it was the fact it’s taking quite a long time to achieve the BOJ’s price target,” Noguchi said. “Inflation has been subdued globally even as monetary and fiscal policies have been quite expansionary.” (Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by John Stonestreet, Catherine Evans and Susan Fenton)