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Bank of Japan raises benchmark interest rate to 1.25% โ€” highest in 31 years

Bank of Japan raises benchmark interest rate to 1.25% โ€” highest in 31 years

C2๐Ÿ‡ฐ๐Ÿ‡ท ํ•œ๊ตญ์–ด โ†’ ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ English

September 18th, 2026

Bank of Japan raises benchmark interest rate to 1.25% โ€” highest in 31 years

C2
Please note: This article has been simplified for language learning purposes. Some context and nuance from the original text may have been modified or removed.

๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ English

By raising its benchmark interest rate on Friday from 1.0% to 1.25%, the Bank of Japan brought it to its highest level in 31 years.

์ผ๋ณธ ์ค‘์•™์€ํ–‰์ด ๊ธˆ์š”์ผ ๊ธฐ์ค€๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ 1.0%์—์„œ 1.25%๋กœ ์ธ์ƒํ•จ์œผ๋กœ์จ, ์ด๋Š” 31๋…„ ๋งŒ์— ์ตœ๊ณ ์น˜์— ๋‹ฌํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋˜์—ˆ๋‹ค.

For decades, the Bank of Japan had kept interest rates at or below zero in order to encourage borrowing and spending, seeking to counter deflation and rescue the Japanese economy from the mire of stagnation, and had thereafter been pursuing the normalization of monetary policy.

์ˆ˜์‹ญ ๋…„๊ฐ„ ์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰์€ ๋””ํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์— ๋Œ€์‘ํ•˜๊ณ  ์ผ๋ณธ ๊ฒฝ์ œ๋ฅผ ์นจ์ฒด์˜ ๋Šช์—์„œ ๊ตฌ์ œํ•˜๊ณ ์ž ์ฐจ์ž…๊ณผ ์ง€์ถœ์„ ์žฅ๋ คํ•  ๋ชฉ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์ œ๋กœ ๋˜๋Š” ๊ทธ ์ดํ•˜๋กœ ์œ ์ง€ํ•ด์˜จ ๋’ค, ํ†ตํ™”์ •์ฑ… ์ •์ƒํ™”๋ฅผ ๋„๋ชจํ•ด ์™”๋‹ค.

This increase in the uncollateralized call rate, a short-term interest rate, was the anticipated outcome reached at the conclusion of a two-day monetary policy meeting, and it is a development that has recently been extensively priced into global markets in advance.

๋ฌด๋‹ด๋ณด ์ฝœ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ๋ผ๋Š” ๋‹จ๊ธฐ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ์˜ ๊ธˆ๋ฒˆ ์ธ์ƒ์€ ์ดํ‹€์— ๊ฑธ์นœ ํ†ตํ™”์ •์ฑ…ํšŒ์˜ ๋์— ๋„์ถœ๋œ ์˜ˆ๊ฒฌ๋œ ๊ท€๊ฒฐ๋กœ์„œ, ์ตœ๊ทผ ๊ธ€๋กœ๋ฒŒ ์‹œ์žฅ์— ๊ด‘๋ฒ”์œ„ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ์„ ๋ฐ˜์˜๋˜์–ด ์˜จ ์‚ฌ์•ˆ์ด๋‹ค.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda stated that the decision was reached following a meticulous examination of the full spectrum of risks, including the war in Iran, expanding market demand for artificial intelligence, and exchange-rate fluctuations.

์šฐ์—๋‹ค ๊ฐ€์ฆˆ์˜ค ์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰ ์ด์žฌ๋Š” ์ด๋ž€ ์ „์Ÿ, ์ธ๊ณต์ง€๋Šฅ์— ๋Œ€ํ•œ ์‹œ์žฅ ์ˆ˜์š” ํ™•๋Œ€, ํ™˜์œจ ๋ณ€๋™ ๋“ฑ ์ œ๋ฐ˜ ์œ„ํ—˜์„ ๋ฉด๋ฐ€ํžˆ ๊ฒ€ํ† ํ•œ ํ›„ ๊ฒฐ์ •์— ๋„๋‹ฌํ–ˆ๋‹ค๊ณ  ๋งํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

Addressing reporters, he asserted that "the Japanese economy is continuing to recover gradually," adding that inflation was approaching the 2% target.

๊ทธ๋Š” ๊ธฐ์ž๋“ค์„ ํ–ฅํ•ด "์ผ๋ณธ ๊ฒฝ์ œ๋Š” ์ ์ง„์ ์œผ๋กœ ํšŒ๋ณต์„ ๊ณ„์†ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค"๋ผ๊ณ  ์–ธ๋ช…ํ•˜๋ฉด์„œ, ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์ด ๋ชฉํ‘œ์น˜์ธ 2%์— ๊ทผ์ ‘ํ•ด ์žˆ๋‹ค๊ณ  ๋ถ€์—ฐํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

Analysts have pointed to the possibility of an additional rate hike in the middle of this year or early next year.

ๅˆ†ๆžๅฎถใŸใกใฏใ€ๆœฌๅนดๅคฎใ‚‚ใ—ใใฏๆฅๅนดๅˆ้ ญใซใŠใ‘ใ‚‹่ฟฝๅŠ ๅˆฉไธŠใ’ใฎๅฏ่ƒฝๆ€งใ‚’ๆŒ‡ๆ‘˜ใ—ใฆใใŸใ€‚

When asked about an additional rate hike, Ueda stressed that more time is needed to confirm that inflation is moving stably, and that it is necessary to keep a close watch on wage growth as well as other risk factors.

่ฟฝๅŠ ๅˆฉไธŠใ’ใซ้–ขใ™ใ‚‹่ณชๅ•ใ‚’ๅ—ใ‘ใŸ้š›ใ€ไธŠ็”ฐใฏใ€็‰ฉไพกไธŠๆ˜‡ใŒๅฎ‰ๅฎš็š„ใซๆŽจ็งปใ—ใฆใ„ใ‚‹ใ“ใจใ‚’็ขบ่ชใ™ใ‚‹ใซใฏใ‚ˆใ‚Šๅคšใใฎๆ™‚้–“ใ‚’่ฆใ™ใ‚‹ใ“ใจใ€ใŠใ‚ˆใณ่ณƒ้‡‘ๆˆ้•ทใชใ‚‰ใณใซใใฎไป–ใฎใƒชใ‚นใ‚ฏ่ฆๅ› ใ‚’ๆณจ่ฆ–ใ™ใ‚‹ๅฟ…่ฆๆ€งใ‚’ๅผท่ชฟใ—ใŸใ€‚

According to Ueda's statement, two of the nine members voiced concerns regarding the strength of Japan's economic growth and maintained a dissenting position.

์šฐ์—๋‹ค์˜ ์ง„์ˆ ์— ์˜๊ฑฐํ•˜๋ฉด, 9๋ช…์˜ ์œ„์› ๊ฐ€์šด๋ฐ 2๋ช…์€ ์ผ๋ณธ ๊ฒฝ์ œ ์„ฑ์žฅ์˜ ๊ฐ•๋„์— ๊ด€ํ•œ ์šฐ๋ ค๋ฅผ ํ”ผ๋ ฅํ•˜๋ฉฐ ๋ฐ˜๋Œ€ ์ž…์žฅ์„ ๊ฒฌ์ง€ํ•˜์˜€๋‹ค.

The United States Federal Reserve likewise raised its key policy rate this week.

๋ฏธ๊ตญ ์—ฐ๋ฐฉ์ค€๋น„์ œ๋„ ์—ญ์‹œ ๊ธˆ์ฃผ์— ์ฃผ์š” ์ •์ฑ…๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ๋ฅผ ์ธ์ƒํ•˜์˜€๋‹ค.

The US rate hike on Wednesday, the first such move since 2023, formed part of an effort to subdue inflation that has stubbornly continued to soar.

2023๋…„ ์ดํ›„ ์ตœ์ดˆ๋กœ ๋‹จํ–‰๋œ ์ˆ˜์š”์ผ์˜ ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ์ธก ์ธ์ƒ ์กฐ์น˜๋Š” ์™„๊ฐ•ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๊ณ ๊ณตํ–‰์ง„์„ ์ง€์†ํ•˜๋Š” ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์„ ์ง„์ •์‹œํ‚ค๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋…ธ๋ ฅ์˜ ์ผํ™˜์ด์—ˆ๋‹ค.

The United States has also been pressing Japan to raise interest rates, driven by concerns over the yen's weakness.

๋ฏธ๊ตญ์€ ๋˜ํ•œ ์—”ํ™” ์•ฝ์„ธ์— ๋Œ€ํ•œ ์šฐ๋ ค๋กœ ์ธํ•ด ์ผ๋ณธ์— ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ ์ธ์ƒ์„ ์••๋ฐ•ํ•ด ์˜จ ๋ฐ” ์žˆ๋‹ค.

The two countries recently resorted to joint intervention with the aim of defending the value of the yen.

์–‘๊ตญ์€ ์ตœ๊ทผ ์—”ํ™” ๊ฐ€์น˜ ๋ฐฉ์–ด๋ฅผ ๋ชฉ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ณต๋™ ๊ฐœ์ž…์— ๋‚˜์„ฐ๋‹ค.

Notwithstanding the Bank of Japan's measures, the US dollar exhibited further strengthening, temporarily surpassing the 157-yen mark.

์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰์˜ ์กฐ์น˜์—๋„ ๋ถˆ๊ตฌํ•˜๊ณ , ๋ฏธ๊ตญ ๋‹ฌ๋Ÿฌ๋Š” ์ถ”๊ฐ€์ ์ธ ๊ฐ•์„ธ๋ฅผ ์‹œํ˜„ํ•˜๋ฉฐ ์ผ์‹œ์ ์œผ๋กœ 157์—” ์„ ์„ ์ƒํšŒํ•˜์˜€๋‹ค.

Earlier this year, it even exceeded 160 yen.

๊ธˆ๋…„ ์ดˆ์—๋Š” 160์—”์„ ์ดˆ๊ณผํ•˜๊ธฐ๋„ ํ•˜์˜€๋‹ค.

The Bank of Japan has set an inflation target of approximately 2 percent.

์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰์€ ์•ฝ 2%์˜ ๋ชฉํ‘œ ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์œจ์„ ์„ค์ •ํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

While Japan's inflation is currently deemed to be in line with that target, some consumers are voicing complaints that the recent surge in prices, particularly for gas- and oil-related products, has been excessively severe.

์ผ๋ณธ์˜ ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์€ ํ˜„์žฌ ๊ทธ ๋ชฉํ‘œ์น˜์— ๋ถ€ํ•ฉํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฒƒ์œผ๋กœ ํŒ๋‹จ๋˜๋‚˜, ์ผ๋ถ€ ์†Œ๋น„์ž๋“ค์€ ํŠนํžˆ ๊ฐ€์Šค ๋ฐ ์„์œ  ๊ด€๋ จ ์ œํ’ˆ์˜ ์ตœ๊ทผ ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ ๊ธ‰๋“ฑ์„ธ๊ฐ€ ์ง€๋‚˜์น˜๊ฒŒ ์‹ฌ๊ฐํ•˜๋‹ค๊ณ  ๋ถˆ๋งŒ์„ ํ† ๋กœํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค.

Harumi Taguchi, an economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, remarked, "With crude oil prices continuing to soar, the Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates again before long in order to contain the risk that consumer inflation will outpace the underlying inflation rate."

S&P ๊ธ€๋กœ๋ฒŒ ๋งˆ์ผ“ ์ธํ…”๋ฆฌ์ „์Šค์˜ ์ด์ฝ”๋…ธ๋ฏธ์ŠคํŠธ ๋‹ค๊ตฌ์น˜ ํ•˜๋ฃจ๋ฏธ๋Š” "์›์œ  ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ์ด ์—ฌ์ „ํžˆ ๊ณ ๊ณตํ–‰์ง„์„ ์ง€์†ํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฐ€์šด๋ฐ, ์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰์€ ์†Œ๋น„์ž ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์ด ๊ธฐ์ € ์ธํ”Œ๋ ˆ์ด์…˜์œจ์„ ์ƒํšŒํ•  ์œ„ํ—˜์„ ์–ต์ œํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด ์กฐ๋งŒ๊ฐ„ ์ถ”๊ฐ€ ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ ์ธ์ƒ์— ๋‚˜์„ค ๊ฒƒ์œผ๋กœ ์ „๋ง๋œ๋‹ค"๋ผ๊ณ  ์–ธ๊ธ‰ํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

She further elaborated that elevated interest rates could weigh on the broader economy through the channels of rising borrowing costs for small and medium-sized enterprises and higher mortgage rates.

๊ทธ๋…€๋Š” ๋‚˜์•„๊ฐ€ ๊ณ ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ€ ์ค‘์†Œ๊ธฐ์—…์˜ ์ฐจ์ž… ๋น„์šฉ ์ƒ์Šน๊ณผ ์ฃผํƒ๋‹ด๋ณด๋Œ€์ถœ ๊ธˆ๋ฆฌ ์ธ์ƒ์ด๋ผ๋Š” ๊ฒฝ๋กœ๋ฅผ ํ†ตํ•ด ๊ฒฝ์ œ ์ „๋ฐ˜์— ๋ถ€๋‹ด์œผ๋กœ ์ž‘์šฉํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋‹ค๊ณ  ๋ถ€์—ฐํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

Analysts are also concerned about bold public spending, such as the tax cuts and aggressive defense investment promised by Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae's government, at a time when public debt is already soaring.

๋ถ„์„๊ฐ€๋“ค์€ ๋˜ํ•œ ๊ณต๊ณต ๋ถ€์ฑ„๊ฐ€ ์ด๋ฏธ ๊ธ‰์ฆํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋Š” ์ƒํ™ฉ์—์„œ ๋‹ค์นด์ด์น˜ ์‚ฌ๋‚˜์— ์ด๋ฆฌ ์ •๋ถ€๊ฐ€ ์•ฝ์†ํ•œ ๊ฐ์„ธ์™€ ๊ณต๊ฒฉ์ ์ธ ๊ตญ๋ฐฉ ํˆฌ์ž์™€ ๊ฐ™์€ ๊ณผ๊ฐํ•œ ๊ณต๊ณต ์ง€์ถœ์„ ์šฐ๋ คํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค.

The Nikkei 225, the benchmark index of the Tokyo stock market, climbed 1.4% immediately after the Bank of Japan's decision was announced, posting gains.

๋„์ฟ„ ์ฆ์‹œ์˜ ๋ฒค์น˜๋งˆํฌ ์ง€ํ‘œ์ธ ๋‹ˆ์ผ€์ด 225๋Š” ์ผ๋ณธ์€ํ–‰์˜ ๊ฒฐ์ •์ด ๊ณตํ‘œ๋œ ์งํ›„ ์ƒ์Šน์„ธ๋ฅผ ๋‚˜ํƒ€๋‚ด๋ฉฐ 1.4% ์ƒ์Šนํ–ˆ๋‹ค.

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

์œ ๋ฆฌ ๊ฐ€๊ฒŒ์•ผ๋งˆ๋Š” Threads์— ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

September 18th, 2026

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