Japan’s FSA is quietly reversing 28 years of bank-industry separation. The market hasn’t noticed.

Japan holds 254 days of oil in reserve. That number has been repeated so often since 28 February that it has become a kind of talisman, proof that the country can absorb anything the Strait of Hormuz throws at it. It is also misleading. On 16 March, Prime Minister Takaichi ordered the largest oil reserve release in Japanese history: 80 million barrels, equivalent to 45 days of domestic consumption. The draw came from both private and government stockpiles and was coordinated with a 400-million-barrel IEA-wide release across 32 member nations. Japan’s contribution was the second largest after the United States. ...

Somewhere between $250 billion and $4 trillion, a ghost lives. The yen carry trade (borrow cheaply in Japan, invest where yields are higher) has been the subject of a strange argument since the August 2024 unwind sent the Nikkei down 12% in a single session. One camp says the trade is dead. The other says it never left. Both cite data. Both sound confident. They cannot both be right, and at USD/JPY 160.46 with the vice finance minister invoking “resolute measures” for the first time in his tenure, the answer has stopped being academic. ...

Predicting when a finance minister will intervene in the currency market is a fool’s errand. The MOF does not publish a schedule. The whole point of intervention is surprise: catching speculators wrong-footed, inflicting maximum pain per yen spent. Anyone claiming to know the date is selling you something. And yet. The decision to intervene is not made in a vacuum. It requires political clearance, diplomatic coordination and tactical conditions that do not appear on demand. These constraints are visible. They can be mapped against a calendar. The result will not be a date circled in red but a window, the period during which the political stars align and the MOF gains the freedom to act. ...

In a long-form interview from the Treasury’s Cash Room on 13 March, a week before the worst single-session bond selloff of his tenure, Bessent compared himself to a lifeguard. Drowning people pull you under, he told the interviewer. Your goal is always to save them. For fourteen months he has had solid ground. When JGB yields spiked in January on fiscal fears around the Takaichi snap election, he called Tokyo and the stress faded within days. When the carry trade wobbled in January, a Fed rate check on dollar-yen was enough. Those problems originated in places he could reach. ...

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 covered the June 2026 Code revision and the ¥126 trillion ($840bn) cash question. Part 1 described the revised Corporate Governance Code – what it asks companies to prove. This article covers what happens to those that do not comply. There are two sources of pressure. The first is structural: a multi-year reconstitution of the TOPIX index that will eject roughly 500 companies by July 2028. The second is behavioural: an activist and institutional investor community that submitted a record 399 shareholder proposals in the 2025 AGM season and is preparing for a 2026 season that falls immediately after the Code revision. ...

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the next phase of Japan’s corporate governance revolution. Part 2 covers the consequences: the delisting wave, the 2026 AGM season and where to look. Japanese equities are outperforming every major developed market in 2026. TOPIX is up 29% over the past year while the S&P 500 has returned 15% and the DAX has gone negative. The YTD gap is wider still. With the BOJ hiking while the Fed holds, local currency returns understate the divergence for dollar-based investors. ...

On Thursday Scott Bessent told Fox Business that the administration might “unsanction the Iranian oil that’s on the water.” One hundred and forty million barrels sitting in tankers at sea would be allowed to enter the open market. Buyers in Japan, India, Singapore and Malaysia could purchase the crude without fear of secondary sanctions. The proceeds would flow back to whoever holds title to the cargo. He offered no mechanism for confiscating revenues. No escrow. No condition excluding Iranian entities from the sale. “We’re not intervening in the financial markets,” he said. “We are supplying the physical markets.” ...

Within twenty-four hours, the two central banks that matter most for Japanese equity investors held their policy rates steady. The Bank of Japan kept its overnight call rate at 0.75 per cent. The Federal Reserve kept its federal funds rate at 3.50–3.75 per cent. Both decisions were expected. Neither was the story. The story is in the dissents, and in what they reveal about the diverging trajectories of the world’s two largest bond markets, the unwinding of the yen carry trade and why TOPIX, and Japanese financial stocks in particular, are positioned to outperform global indices through the turbulence ahead. ...

Japan has the one capability the Hormuz coalition lacks most. The legal architecture exists. The existential case is overwhelming. The only variable is political will.