BOJ to Assess Whether Inflation Has Hit 2% Target at Next Week’s Meeting

The symbolic weight here outweighs the immediate policy signal: declaring that underlying inflation has reached target would formally close a deflation-fighting era the BOJ has operated under since 2013, which matters for how Japanese rate expectations and yen-sensitive carry trades are framed globally. Because the assessment is described as a judgment rather than a decision, the open question is whether the BOJ treats this as a threshold to act on or merely a milestone to acknowledge. Watch the language around "underlying" inflation — that qualifier is where the real signal sits.