For Toru Fujioka's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
An increasing number of economists forecast that consumer prices will not only fail to meet the Bank of Japan's target, but that they will peak as soon as this autumn, in stark contrast with the view from Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda and his policy board. Inflation ...
Japan's economy is running the hottest relative to capacity since the global financial crisis. More than four years after the Bank of Japan launched its radical monetary easing, key conditions are aligning in its long battle to truly escape from deflation. The latest reading of ...
Salarymen have taken a pummeling in recent years — with pay stagnating and rising numbers of working women and mothers eroding their once-dominant position as the family's breadwinner. Those changes have affected how they are seen at home, with children respecting their mothers more than ...
Land prices in Tokyo's central Chuo Ward, home to the famous Ginza shopping district, have jumped by 51 percent in four years. In Osaka, they are up by nearly half. Booming construction of hotels, office buildings, shopping centers and apartments, financed by record lending for ...
In addition to keys and eyeglasses and other commonly lost objects, millions of dollars worth of cash reaches the Tokyo police's lost and found department every year. In fact, last year people handed over a record ¥3.67 billion ($32 million) in lost cash, and about ...
Critics say Kochi Shinkin Bank has lost its way and is acting more like an investment firm than a regional lender. Supporters say it shows that provincial banks can thrive in Japan even as their customer base shrinks, so long as they're prepared to ...
Traditions die hard in the small mountain town of Kanegasaki, whose history includes a series of battles nearly 1,000 years ago that drove an ancestor of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to leave the area for southern Japan. But as Japan ages and rural towns face ...
After a long year, the Bank of Japan unexpectedly finds itself in a sweet spot. The yen has tumbled in recent weeks, thanks to surging global bond yields, and economic conditions at home and abroad are improving. Though less than bullish, the outlook for the ...
A withering factory town in the rust belt is looking for revival through a dose of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "robot revolution." Kadoma's population in Osaka Prefecture has shrunk 13 percent as the nation ages, prompting mergers among elementary schools and emergency services departments. Factories ...
Masayoshi Amamiya is viewed as so essential to operations at the Bank of Japan that he's known inside the central bank as "Mr. BOJ." With the shift in recent months from a blitz on deflation to a long-haul campaign that's set to outlast Gov. Haruhiko ...
