Roughly two-thirds of listed Japanese companies close their books on March 31 and report in four clustered kessan waves, typically publishing on TDnet around the 15:30 cash close. The number that moves the stock is usually the company’s own full-year guidance — and its mid-year revisions — not the reported quarter.
Japan’s market-moving wage number is not the headline: scheduled (base) pay at common establishments is the series analysts watch most closely for BOJ policy signals, and sustained growth near 3% is a widely used — though unofficial — benchmark for rate hikes. Here is how to read the MHLW Monthly Labour Survey — nominal vs real wages, bonus noise, sample revisions, and how shunto results flow into the monthly prints.
Japanese megabanks fund themselves with deposits that have historically repriced far less than policy rates when the BoJ hikes, while floating-rate loans and maturing bonds reinvest at higher yields — even as fixed-rate JGB holdings lose market value. What that means for MUFG, SMFG and Mizuho.
Japan’s ‘core CPI’ strips out only fresh food — not energy — and it is the series the Bank of Japan’s 2% target is judged against. Here is how to read headline vs core vs core-core, why Tokyo CPI leads the national print by a month, and how each release feeds through to JGB yields, the yen, and equity sectors.