Government officials who attended the Bank of Japan's December policy meeting were given a half-hour adjournment to contact their ministries, minutes showed, underscoring the significance of the central bank's decision to tweak its bond-market peg.
At the Dec. 19-20 meeting, the BOJ kept its ultraeasy monetary policy but shocked markets with a surprise decision to double the movement range around 10-year bond yields.
While the central bank characterized the widening of the range as a move to improve the sustainability of easing, many market participants interpreted it as a measure to pave the way for a policy pivot.