Finance Ministry discloses holiday yen interventions total 11.7 trillion yen

2026-08-07

Intervention during the holidays

It was revealed in the Finance Ministry's quarterly intervention data for April to June, released on the 7th, that the government and the Bank of Japan carried out three yen-buying, dollar-selling interventions during the long holidays in April and May. The intervention on April 30 was the largest on record.

According to the daily figures released by the ministry, the interventions amounted to 627.87 billion yen on April 30, 780.2 billion yen on May 4 and 467.59 billion yen on May 6. The total came to 11.7349 trillion yen. The April 30 operation exceeded the 591.85 billion yen intervention on April 29, 2024, and was the largest yen-buying intervention ever.

Market and coordinated intervention

The government and the BOJ stepped into the market on April 30 with their first yen-buying intervention in one year and nine months, since July 2024. Markets had also been increasingly convinced that covert intervention took place during the holidays, and the latest disclosure confirmed that view.

A Finance Ministry official said of the holiday intervention, 'GW is a thin market. If you do not act, you will be acted upon.' Even so, it is difficult for intervention alone to change the underlying trend, and the effect after April 30 did not last long. The yen, which had fallen into the upper 160s per dollar, briefly surged to the 155-yen range, but selling of the currency later regained the upper hand, and by late July it had touched levels near 164 per dollar, the weakest yen in about 40 years.

Masafumi Yamamoto, chief foreign exchange strategist at Mizuho Securities, said the intervention was little more than a palliative measure amid lingering concerns over fiscal policy and caution over the Bank of Japan's slow pace of rate increases, and that a quick return to the 160-yen range was natural. He added, however, that without the April-May interventions, the yen may have weakened to around 165 per dollar in May.

Japan-U.S. talks and outlook

As the limits of unilateral intervention became clear, the moves also laid the groundwork for possible coordinated action with the United States. The talks gained momentum when U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama in Tokyo in May. During the roughly three-hour meeting, the two discussed foreign exchange policy and other issues.

After the meeting, a Finance Ministry official said, 'We reconfirmed the agreement in the joint Japan-U.S. finance ministers' statement of September 2025. This is very good news for us as well.' Bessent had expressed concern to the Japanese side that the yen was not reflecting fundamentals, according to the official.

If the yen weakens again, the possibility of additional intervention remains. In a statement released on the 3rd, the Finance Ministry referred to the Federal Reserve's 'Foreign and International Monetary Authorities Repo Facility', which provides dollar funding against U.S. Treasuries as collateral.

The mechanism allows Japan to secure funds for intervention without having to sell dollar assets in the market, and is seen as a way to signal to the market that funding capacity remains ample. A government official said, 'It is better not to give the impression of any limit.'

Shin Noji, chief foreign exchange and bond strategist at SMBC Nikko Securities, said the series of moves at the end of July has further heightened market suspicion.

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