Tourist numbers up from 5,000 to 120,000 a year, sea ice at record lows, emperor penguins now Endangered. What ATCM48 in Hiroshima settled, and what it left unresolved.
On May 1, Japan's METI met infrastructure operators from the power and gas sectors, and Economy Minister Akazawa asked electricity companies to run emergency system inspections and report within a month. The order covers 24 critical-infrastructure operators in the power sector. The trigger was Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview, announced April 7, which surfaced a 27-year-old bug chain in OpenBSD's TCP SACK code among others. The UK's AISI reached a more measured verdict. How Japan's penalty-free approach compares with CISA's OT principles and the EU's NIS2.
Private estimates put Japan's April 30 yen-buying intervention at 5 to 5.4 trillion yen, derived from the gap between the BOJ's current-account forecast and money brokers' projections. What that bazooka means in practice: a 190bp US-Japan rate gap, a yen carry trade starting to unwind into emerging markets, and the political constraint of the US Treasury's monitoring list.
Two months into the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Japan took its first Russian crude cargo since the blockade began. Taiyo Oil bought Sakhalin-2 barrels on a spot contract at the request of Japan's energy agency, and the tanker reached Imabari on May 4. How the "Sakhalin exception" to the G7 and EU price cap works, how Germany, South Korea and India have played the same shock differently, and what it all reveals about Japan's structural exposure.
On May 2, Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi met Vietnam's new PM Le Minh Hung in Hanoi. Amid Middle East instability, Japan agreed to underwrite crude purchases for the Nghi Son refinery through NEXI, the first project under the Power Asia framework, and to work with Hanoi on rare earths and other critical minerals. In a speech at Vietnam National University, Takaichi set out three pillars for an evolved Free and Open Indo-Pacific: supply chains, shared rules, and security. How it differs from US friendshoring and the EU's Global Gateway.
Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor who ran Japan's decade of extraordinary easing, now calls the weak yen excessive and wants 130 per dollar, plus rate hikes to 1.5%. Japanese social media responded with a collective 'look who's talking.' The rate-gap mechanics, the carry trade, and why the yen kept sliding even after the BOJ went to 1.00% in June 2026.
JBIC and Japan's three megabanks signed $2.221 billion in loans for the first three projects of a $550 billion US investment ceiling, the price Tokyo paid to bring Trump's tariffs down to 15%. The deal, the dollar-funding crunch, and what changed when the Supreme Court ruled IEEPA tariffs unlawful in February 2026.
The day after Japan's April 30 intervention, Vice Finance Minister Atsushi Mimura hinted at more with a single line: Golden Week is just getting started. The campaign eventually totalled a record 11.7 trillion yen. But against a fifth straight year of trade deficits, an oil bill inflated by the Iran conflict, yen weakness against every major currency, and a 40-trillion-yen carry trade, intervention only buys time. Even the June hike to 1.0 percent did not turn it.
On April 30, Japan intervened to buy yen for the first time in 21 months. Hours after Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama warned of 'decisive action' and Vice Minister Atsushi Mimura issued a 'final evacuation warning,' the dollar fell about 5 yen from the high 160s to 155.50, its steepest one-day drop since December 2022. The campaign continued through Golden Week and totalled a record 11.73 trillion yen. The yen kept falling anyway.
One day after the Bank of Japan held rates on April 28, the yen hit a 21-month low of 160.67 and 10-year JGB yields reached 2.535 percent, the highest since 1999. A falling currency and rising yields are not supposed to move together. We unpack what that combination says about being behind the curve, the intervention question, the carry trade, and a hawkish Fed, then follow the story through the June hike to 1.0 percent and a yen that kept sliding anyway.
On April 23, PM Sanae Takaichi met five foodtech CEOs at the PM's Office: Oishii Farm, PlantX, FRD Japan, Regional Fish, and Toko Tekko. Why these five? This article decodes how each company's technology answers one of the world's four shared food crises, climate-driven farmland collapse, ocean depletion, population growth, and shrinking farmer populations, and the strategic logic behind Japan choosing to win in specific categories rather than competing across the board.