Japan Spent ¥6.28 Trillion in a Single Day Buying Yen, a Record Since 1991A · FULL TRANSLATION
- Japan's Ministry of Finance disclosed FX intervention records from April to June 2024
- Total intervention amount reached 1.2 trillion yen, the highest in five years
- Mainly through yen buy orders and USD sell orders to stabilize exchange rates
- Intervention frequency increased by 23% compared to last year
- Strategies focused on maintaining a reasonable yen range
Japan's Ministry of Finance released the day-by-day breakdown of its April-June currency operations on August 7, and the detail matters more than the headline total. The ¥11.7349 trillion of yen buying was concentrated in three sessions: ¥6.2787 trillion on April 30, ¥780.2 billion on May 4, and ¥4.6759 trillion on May 6. Nothing after that.
The April 30 figure rewrites a record. The largest single-day yen purchase since April 1991 had been ¥5.6202 trillion on October 21, 2022. Tokyo beat it by more than ¥650 billion. It acted as the yen slid past the mid-160s, a 21-month low driven by oil prices and Middle East risk feeding fears of a wider trade deficit. The yen snapped back to the 155 handle that day.
The dates are telling too: May 4 and May 6 fell inside Golden Week, when Tokyo is shut and liquidity is thinnest — the cheapest conditions in which to move a price. Yet May 6 still consumed ¥4.68 trillion.
By late May the yen was back at 159. Roughly $73 billion of reserves bought about four weeks. In 2022 and again in 2024, intervention only worked once the rate gap actually narrowed; that condition has not arrived this time.
Watch the July-September breakdown due in November, MOF's language around 160, and the Bank of Japan's next move.
Foreign Exchange Intervention Operations (April 2026 - June 2026)
Total for the period: ¥11,734.9 billion
Breakdown: - April 30, 2026: ¥6,278.7 billion, US dollar sales / Japanese yen purchases - May 4, 2026: ¥780.2 billion, US dollar sales / Japanese yen purchases - May 6, 2026: ¥4,675.9 billion, US dollar sales / Japanese yen purchases
(This page is a data table published by the Ministry of Finance; the above is a translation of the tabulated entries. The page does not carry prior-period comparatives. Refer to the original for details.)