On August 24 Takaichi pledged continued aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia at the Kyiv summit. Japan also draws 8.9% of its LNG from Russia, and a US Senate bill counts it among the top five buyers of Russian gas.
Japan's finance minister has again signaled support for domestic crypto ETFs. But under current law crypto is not an eligible asset for a Japanese fund, so no spot ETF can be built. The bill that fixes that became law on July 15, 2026. Here is the honest answer to the three questions global investors ask: when, which tokens, and at what tax rate.
PMs Takaichi and Modi agreed on July 2, 2026 to turn cow dung into vehicle fuel and build a 2.5-million CNG-car market in India, a clean-energy deal that doubles as a hedge against China's grip on electric cars.
Japan's government just promised over 370 trillion yen ($2.3 trillion) across 17 strategic sectors by 2040. We unpack the suspicious arithmetic: a 6.5x return promised on chips, an undisclosed public-private split, and a deadline conveniently 14 years away.
Japan, the UK, and Italy are building the GCAP sixth-gen fighter, but lead partner Britain is in political and fiscal chaos after PM Starmer's resignation, with the contract keeping it alive expiring June 30. Why Tokyo is the anxious one, plus the queue of countries like Canada lining up to join.
Germany's largest arms maker, Rheinmetall, is eyeing its first production base in Japan. Who is the company behind the guns on the Leopard 2 and Japan's Type 90 tank, how did the Ukraine war transform it, and why does it now want to export from Japan?
Japan's 2026 population estimate shows foreign residents up 9.64% to 3.73 million while the total falls. How Japan is quietly becoming an immigration society, compared with Germany and Canada.
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.
At the APEC trade ministers meeting in Suzhou, China, Japan's industry minister demanded that exporting countries rectify arbitrary rare earth curbs. A look at the slow squeeze on Japan, its roots in a Taiwan remark, and Tokyo's exit strategy.
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 May 19, Japan's ruling LDP unveiled a policy proposal calling for stablecoins and tokenized deposits to be treated as national financial infrastructure — and added to PM Takaichi's Big-Boned Policy in June. We compare Japan's approach with the Web3 hubs of Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE.
Anthropic's Head of Global Affairs Michael Sellitto arrived in Tokyo May 15 and confirmed the company is weighing participation in the cyber defense corporate alliance proposed by Japan's ruling LDP. Modeled on US Project Glasswing, the framework will test Japan's distinctive 'middle path': an AI Promotion Law with no penalties, sitting between the EU AI Act's hard regulation and the deregulatory turn under the Trump administration.
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.
PM Sanae Takaichi pledged to effectively double research funding and build a 'new technological nation' targeting AI, semiconductors and quantum, and the Japan Growth Strategy carrying those measures was adopted by cabinet on July 21, 2026. We look at the 17 strategic fields and 62 priority technologies against the reality of Japan's 3.44% R&D-to-GDP ratio and its falling PhD numbers.
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.
On May 4 in Canberra, PM Takaichi and PM Albanese signed five joint documents including the Economic Security Joint Declaration. Six critical mineral projects backed by $1.2B. How Japan's approach differs from the US IRA and EU CRMA, and what it means for global supply chains.
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.
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.