Government stockpiled rice, which was transported by bullet train, or the “shinkansen”, into the capital is handed over to those who pre-ordered bags, at Tokyo Station on June 10, 2025.<\/p>\n
Str | Afp | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Japan’s core inflation rate accelerated to 2.9% in September, the first increase since May and in line with expectations from economists polled by Reuters.<\/p>\n
This was higher than the 2.7% seen in August<\/a>. The core inflation metric in Japan strips out the prices of fresh food but includes energy costs.<\/p>\n Headline inflation in Japan also climbed to 2.9% from 2.7% the previous month, above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target<\/a>.<\/p>\n In contrast, the so-called “core-core” inflation rate \u2014 which strips out both fresh food and energy costs and is closely monitored by the BOJ \u2014 eased to 3% from 3.3% in August.<\/p>\n Rice inflation, which drew headlines earlier this year<\/a>, eased sharply to 49.2%, down from 69.7% the previous month. In May, rice inflation hit 101.7%, the highest level in 50 years.<\/p>\n The data comes as Japan sees a new prime minister in Sanae Takaichi, who inherits an economy beset by trade uncertainties, cost-of-living worries, and a central bank determined to raise interest rates and normalize monetary policy.<\/p>\n Inflation will be a major bugbear for Takaichi to tackle, experts previously told CNBC. Japan has a large population of retirees drawing pensions and those on a fixed income, making inflation “very painful” for them, Tomohiko Taniguchi,\u00a0Special Advisor at the Fujitsu Future Studies Center, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia<\/a>” on Oct 13.<\/p>\n “How to tackle inflation is going to be the first litmus test to judge whether Takaichi could deliver a policy package,” Taniguchi said.<\/p>\n Jesper Koll, expert director at financial services firm Monex Group told CNBC on Wednesday after Takaichi took power that “if inflation in Japan is still is not below 2% in six to nine months time, the popularity of this cabinet is going to plummet because [to] the Japanese people… the number one, number two, number three concern is inflation.”<\/p>\n \u2014 This is breaking news, please check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Government stockpiled rice, which was transported by bullet train, or the “shinkansen”, into the capital is handed over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[4055,4053,79,207,179,18,19,185,17,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-141650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-asia-economy","9":"tag-breaking-news-asia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-business-news","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-inflation","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-japan"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115426331557478266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}