In the balance, between Ueda and Takaichi

Cherry Blossoms, Bond Yields, and a Currency on a Knife-Edge

by Macro D

USD/JPY has a way of dragging me back to first principles.

Every time it leans into 160, it stops being “just another level” and starts behaving like a referendum — on credibility, on patience, on who really holds the steering wheel in Japan.

Is this Ueda’s market, where the Bank of Japan slowly reclaims control after a generation of repression? Or is it Takaichi’s Japan now, where fiscal impulse and political mandate quietly box the central bank into a narrower corridor?

In the pages that follow, Macro D is going to walk through the stretch from Takaichi’s election victory to the latest BoJ meeting, and ask a simple question with an uncomfortable answer: when the world is changing fast, who is actually allowed to move — and who is only allowed to react?

Let’s dig in.