Atsushi Mimura, Japan's top currency diplomat, said on Monday that Tokyo will continue close coordination with U.S. authorities on foreign exchange policy and will ‘‘respond appropriately,’’ citing a joint Japan-U.S. statement issued in September of last year as the basis for any actions. Mimura declined to confirm media reports about recent rate checks.
The yen surged on Friday after reports that the New York Federal Reserve conducted rate checks, a development that raised prospects of joint action by Japan and the United States to counter the currency's decline. Mimura told reporters that coordination with U.S. authorities will continue as needed and that responses will be grounded in the September joint statement.
The September statement reiterated a common commitment to market-determined exchange rates while specifying that foreign-exchange intervention should be reserved for situations of excessive volatility. Japanese officials have said that the September document represented the first written confirmation from the U.S. acknowledging the option to intervene in the event of excessive volatility.
Mimura declined to elaborate on whether the two governments might mount a coordinated market intervention. He did not provide confirmation for the media accounts of rate checks that circulated after the yen's abrupt move on Friday.
Japan's Finance Minister, Satsuki Katayama, also refrained from commenting on the reported rate checks that were linked to the sudden appreciation of the yen against the U.S. dollar. When asked about the matter, Katayama said, "There is nothing I can talk about," offering no further detail.
The officials' remarks left unresolved questions about if or when Tokyo and Washington might intervene in currency markets together, and they underscored that public confirmation of operational steps remained limited. Both Mimura's and Katayama's public statements emphasized adherence to the September framework while declining to confirm contemporaneous reports regarding central bank activity.
Clear summary - Japan will maintain close U.S. coordination on FX, invoking a September joint statement; officials declined to confirm Friday's reported rate checks tied to a sharp yen move.