Japanese Yen (JPY) Data Coverage: Indicators, Sources and Release Times

This guide covers the Japanese yen series in the FXMacroData production catalogue: 38 series spanning the Bank of Japan policy rate and overnight call rate, a JGB curve from 1 to 40 years, national CPI, labour, trade, the current account, money supply and official reserves. It explains which Japanese institution publishes each one, when releases land in Tokyo time and UTC, and how USD/JPY traders use them.

Quick answer

What is covered

38 JPY series: the BoJ policy rate, the uncollateralised overnight call rate, 15 JGB yield tenors, CPI, core CPI and the corporate goods price index, labour data, GDP, retail sales, housing starts, sentiment surveys, trade, current account, M1 to M3, FX and gold reserves and the yen trade-weighted index.

Who publishes it

The Bank of Japan, the Ministry of Finance, the Statistics Bureau, the Cabinet Office, METI and MLIT, with the trade-weighted index from the BIS.

Why it matters

The yen is the main low-yield funding currency, so any shift in BoJ policy or JGB yields moves USD/JPY and the yen crosses through carry flows as well as fundamentals.

Takeaway: In Japan, policy normalisation is the dominant theme: CPI, wages and JGB yields all feed one question, which is how fast the BoJ keeps raising rates.

Who Publishes Japanese Data

• Bank of Japan (BoJ): Monetary Policy Meeting decisions on the policy rate, the daily uncollateralised overnight call rate (TONA), money stock (M1, M2, M3) and the Corporate Goods Price Index.
• Ministry of Finance (MoF): customs-basis trade statistics, the balance of payments, official foreign exchange and gold reserves, the Business Outlook Survey (jointly with the Cabinet Office) and JGB benchmark and constant-maturity yields. The MoF also decides on yen intervention, which the BoJ executes as its agent.
• Statistics Bureau of Japan: the national CPI and the Labour Force Survey.
• Cabinet Office: quarterly GDP and the monthly Consumer Confidence Survey (ESRI).
• METI (retail sales) and MLIT (housing starts).

FXMacroData records each release with the reference period (date) and the publication time (announcement_datetime, Unix seconds) and serves it through the REST API, dashboards and MCP server, typically within seconds of official publication (see release speed).

JPY Indicators Covered

Policy and short-term rates

• Bank of Japan policy rate: the BoJ's guideline for the overnight call rate, recorded at every Monetary Policy Meeting including holds. After decades near zero, each move now resets the yen's carry profile.
• Uncollateralised overnight call rate: the daily market rate the BoJ targets. It confirms how the policy rate is transmitted into money markets.

Japanese government bond yields

• 1-year through 10-year and out to 30-year and 40-year: 15 daily tenors from the Ministry of Finance (1 to 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 40 years). The 2-year reflects expected BoJ moves; the 10-year and super-long end show how the market is absorbing reduced BoJ bond buying. Spreads to US Treasuries are one of the most-used inputs into USD/JPY models.

Inflation

• CPI inflation: national CPI, annual per cent change.
• Core CPI (ex fresh food): the measure the BoJ refers to for its 2 per cent price stability target. Sustained core inflation is the precondition for further rate rises.
• Corporate Goods Price Index: the BoJ's producer price measure, which picks up the effect of a weak or strong yen on import costs early.

Growth, activity and sentiment

• GDP: quarterly real GDP from the Cabinet Office, in yen trillions.
• Retail sales and housing starts: monthly demand indicators from METI and MLIT.
• Business Outlook Survey and consumer confidence: survey gauges of corporate and household sentiment, both normalised to a 0 to 100 scale in the catalogue.

Labour market

• Unemployment rate, employment, participation rate, full-time and part-time employment: the monthly Labour Force Survey. Japan's labour market is structurally tight, so the signal is in the trend, which supports the wage gains the BoJ wants to see.

External sector, reserves and money

• Trade balance and current account balance: monthly MoF data. Japan's current account surplus is now dominated by investment income rather than goods trade, which matters for how much of it is converted back into yen.
• Foreign exchange reserves and official gold holdings: monthly MoF figures. Changes in FX reserves help confirm whether intervention has taken place.
• M1, M2 and M3: BoJ money stock.
• Trade-weighted index (NEER): the BIS nominal effective yen rate.

JPY Release Timing

Japan does not observe daylight saving time, so Tokyo time (Asia/Tokyo, UTC+9) maps to a fixed UTC time all year. Most morning releases fall at 08:30 or 08:50 JST, which is 23:30 or 23:50 UTC on the previous calendar day.

The BoJ statement is released when the meeting ends rather than at a set time, so decision-day strategies should key off announcement_datetime rather than a scheduled minute. Upcoming dates are on the release calendar.

Worked Example: August 2026 National CPI

Japan's national CPI for August 2026 showed headline inflation of 1.9 per cent year on year, unchanged from July, while core CPI excluding fresh food eased to 1.7 per cent from 1.8 per cent. The request:

curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY" "https://api.fxmacrodata.com/v1/announcements/jpy/inflation?start_date=2026-08-01"

The latest row returned (abridged to the fields used here):

{
  "currency": "JPY",
  "indicator": "inflation",
  "data": [
    {
      "date": "2026-08-31",
      "val": 1.9,
      "previous_value": 1.9,
      "previous_date": "2026-07-31",
      "announcement_datetime": 1789687800,
      "announcement_datetime_local": "2026-09-18T08:30:00+09:00"
    }
  ]
}

The epoch 1789687800 is 23:30 UTC on 17 September 2026, which is 08:30 local time (Asia/Tokyo) on 18 September 2026.

Note that the Tokyo publication date (18 September) falls on the previous UTC day. A backtest that buckets events by UTC date would otherwise attach this print to the wrong session. The same release stamped the core CPI row with an identical timestamp.

How Traders Use JPY Data

1. Core CPI and wages against the BoJ path. Track core CPI and the labour series between meetings. With the policy rate now at 1.25 per cent after the September 2026 meeting, each sustained print near or above 2 per cent strengthens the case for the next move.
2. US-Japan yield spreads. The 2-year and 10-year JGB yields against the matching Treasury yields are the core of most USD/JPY fair-value models; a narrowing spread has tended to pull USD/JPY lower.
3. Intervention monitoring. When USD/JPY moves fast, the Ministry of Finance's monthly reserves, read alongside its own published intervention record, show whether official selling of dollars has occurred and how much firepower remains.
4. Carry and funding. The overnight call rate is the funding leg of yen carry trades. Rising Japanese short rates raise the cost of being short yen against higher-yielding currencies.
5. Import prices. The Corporate Goods Price Index shows how yen weakness passes into costs and, later, consumer prices.

The USD/JPY dashboard shows these series alongside price.

Related Pages

• Bank of Japan guide for the policy framework and meeting schedule.
• Japan indicator hub for every JPY series with charts and API documentation.
• USD/JPY dashboard for price, differentials and release markers.
• Release calendar for upcoming Japanese events in your time zone.
• Data coverage for all 22 currencies.