Japan's calorie-based food self-sufficiency fell to a record-low 37% in fiscal 2025 while the production-value measure rose to 66%. A 48% rise in rice prices moved both. By production value, Japan ranks above the US.
Japan bought yen without warning on July 30, moving the currency five yen in an hour. The BOJ then held at 1% and warned inflation could overshoot, as Washington and Seoul moved too.
Japan saw a record 36 ramen shop bankruptcies in the first half of 2026. While the world pays $18 a bowl, shops in ramen's homeland collapse against a cultural price ceiling of 1,000 yen (about $6). Here is the structural squeeze behind the paradox.
Japan's antitrust regulator raided six major ice cream makers over an alleged price-fixing cartel. Among them: Akagi Nyugyo, the maker of Garigari-kun, a company beloved for theatrically apologizing over a 10-yen price increase. Here is what the probe alleges and why it stings.
On June 16 the Bank of Japan raised its policy rate to 1.0%, the highest in 31 years, with Governor Ueda hospitalized and absent. We unpack the 7-1 vote, the lone hiker among major central banks, the still-weak yen, and Japan's swelling debt-service bill.
Japan's PM Takaichi wants to scrap food consumption tax for two years, but POS vendors say the register overhaul takes a year. Why does changing a number take so long? We compare Japan's tangled POS systems with the US, where a tax change takes an afternoon. The twist: America's speed is a side effect of its chaotic tax code.
PM Takaichi met BOJ Governor Ueda on May 22 and asked the central bank to carry out 'appropriate policy.' We explain Japan's central bank independence next to the US Fed and the ECB, and how a weak yen near 159 and the carry trade tie this to global markets.
On the afternoon of May 14, Japan's 10-year government bond yield hit 2.625%, the highest since 1997. OIS markets now price a 74% probability of a rate hike at the June 15-16 BOJ meeting. BOJ board member Kazuyuki Masu, previously considered cautious, said in a Kagoshima speech that 'early rate hikes are desirable.' With US PPI surprise, USD/JPY near 158, and 'long rates at 3% in sight,' we map where Japan's FX, bond, and rate-hike expectations stand right now.
Nintendo sold 19.86 million Switch 2 units in about ten months, the fastest start of any hardware it has made. On the same day, it announced a 10,000 yen price hike for Japan effective May 25, plus $50 increases in the US and Canada from September 1. Japan's 20% jump beats the 11% in the US and lands nearly four months sooner. Why Japan went first and hardest: AI-driven memory prices, a weak yen, and an arbitrage gap that made the domestic model a reseller target.
Reuters reported that Japan conducted multiple yen-buying interventions during the May Golden Week, exploiting thin holiday liquidity. Market estimates put the total at roughly 10 trillion yen including the April 30 operation; the Ministry of Finance later confirmed 11.7349 trillion yen, a record for a yen-buying episode. Vice Finance Minister Mimura said IMF rules do not constrain intervention frequency. Within a month the effect had faded and the yen was back at 161 to the dollar.
The BOJ released its March 18-19 meeting minutes on May 7. The deliberation sections are anonymous, but votes and dissenting opinions are published with names attached. The 8-1 split? Hajime Takata alone dissented. We trace the 9 members behind the March meeting, the shift to a 6-3 split in April, and the rebalancing coming when Nakagawa's term ends in late June.
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.
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.
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.
The Bank of Japan held its policy rate at 0.75% on April 28, 2026 by a 6-3 vote, with three dissenters proposing a hike to 1.0%, a first under Governor Ueda. We unpack Ueda's press conference, allegations of pressure from the Takaichi administration, the sharp upward revision in inflation forecasts, the immediate market reaction, and the divergence between domestic and international assessments.
Tokyo Gas raises its monthly base fee by ¥150 ($0.94) starting October, the first hike since 1980. But in Japan, many are reacting with 'isn't 46 years of NO change the weird part?' A look at how Japan compares to US, UK, and Sweden gas bills, what yen weakness and LNG imports mean, and why this signals the end of Japan's deflation era.
Japan's gasoline has hit record highs, dialysis tubing is running out, and bathtubs can't be shipped. With 95% of crude oil coming from the Middle East, pivoting to the world's largest oil producer, America, seems like a perfect Win-Win. But refinery design, tanker size, the Panama Canal bottleneck, and an ironic naphtha yield problem all stand in the way. Here's why the obvious solution isn't simple.
The Hormuz Strait blockade has cut off Japan's naphtha supply, forcing TOTO to halt bathtub orders and LIXIL to declare delivery dates unknown. Insulation up 40%, paint up 80%, pipes up 20%; housing materials are skyrocketing across the board. We analyze Japan's structural vulnerability of depending on the Middle East for 90% of its crude oil, with comparative data from other countries.