The Bank of Japan has tweaked its unprecedented asset purchase program twice over the past three weeks, supporting a view in financial markets that the central bank is increasingly reluctant to be viewed as financing the government's debt.
The moves were the first since the BOJ launched its radical "quantitative and qualitative" monetary easing program in April 2013 to help end nearly two decades of deflation under an economic revival plan adopted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The BOJ is buying up massive amounts of Japanese government bonds and other financial assets from banks to flood the economy with cash in hopes of raising the inflation rate to 2 percent.