Shop owners of a 70-year-old “takoyaki”, or octopus balls, restaurant chat while cooking along a street in the Taito Ward area of Tokyo on February 21, 2025. Richard A. Brooks | Afp | Getty Images Japan’s headline inflation rate fell to 1.5% in January, its lowest level since March 2022. The reading ended a run…
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), speaks at an LDP election rally in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Traders are bracing for increased volatility as the Feb. 8 lower house election approaches. Photographer: Soichiro Koriyama/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images…
An employee at the Celsior Wadamachi supermarket in Yokohama, Japan, on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. Soaring food costs are a key component driving broader inflation higher, with data Friday expected to show consumer price growth has stayed above the central bank’s 2% target for four straight calendar years. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images Japan’s headline inflation…
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, during a news conference the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. Takaichi officially called an early election next month and promised a temporary sales tax cut on food if she wins a fresh mandate for her new coalition. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images Less than…
Sanae Takaichi listens to a question after visiting the Yasukuni shrine to honour the war dead durig the shrine’s spring festival in Tokyo on April 23, 2015. Toshifumi Kitamura | Afp | Getty Images Having won the presidency of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Sanae Takaichi is on the verge of becoming the country’s first…
Owngarden | Moment | Getty Images Japan’s exports plunged 2.6% in July from a year earlier, their steepest drop since February 2021, as shipments to its two largest markets — the United States and China — declined. The fall was sharper than the 2.1% contraction forecast in a Reuters poll and compared with a 0.5%…
