Tomoyo Morie, a housewife who lives in Tokyo with her husband and teenage son, is more afraid that inflation will wreck her savings than gyrating markets.
"I could lose out from currency and stock investments, but it's even riskier over the long term to leave money in bank deposits when prices will likely climb," said Morie, 46, who has been investing a third of her savings in funds and currencies in the past few years. "A sense of crisis is driving me."
For economists, there is little evidence Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been able to revive inflation in Japan, where core consumer prices, stripping out food costs and the impact of last year's sales tax hike, have hovered near zero.