Japan Desk/Report

Bank of Japan set to raise policy rate to 1.25%, a level last seen in April 1995

The Bank of Japan is set to raise its policy interest rate to 1.25% next week, The Japan Times reports. The rate last stood at that level in April 1995.

ReportPublished 12 September 20261 min read1 linked source · 3 checked factsRevision 4

Chureito pagoda with Mount Fuji in early autumn — Illustration: Chureito Pagoda and Mount Fuji 20241022 · Unknown · CC BY 4.0 licence

The Bank of Japan is set to raise its policy interest rate to 1.25% next week, The Japan Times reports. The last time the policy rate stood at 1.25% was April 1995, which makes this the first move to that level in more than three decades. The report dates the decision to next week.

The policy rate is the benchmark the Bank of Japan sets for short-term borrowing between financial institutions. For households and businesses in Japan, 1.25% marks a different footing from the years of near-zero policy.

The report gives the level and the timing of the decision. How a rate at 1.25% flows through to mortgages, savings and prices is not set out, so the practical size of the change for any one borrower is not established yet. The Bank of Japan will set out the detail when it announces the decision.

For visitors, the figure is a background signal about where Japanese monetary policy is heading rather than a travel rule. The level to watch when the announcement comes is 1.25%, the same figure the report compares with April 1995.

What the reporting says

Each line below is stated by the page named above it, and only by that page.

Stated by The Japan Times

The Bank of Japan is set to raise its policy interest rate to 1.25%.
The rate increase is expected next week.
The last time the Bank of Japan's policy interest rate stood at 1.25% was in April 1995.

Our view

The 1.25% figure is the point of the story: it marks a return to a level the policy rate has not held since April 1995.

What the reporting says: The Japan Times reports that the Bank of Japan is set to raise its policy interest rate to 1.25% next week, and that the rate last stood at that level in April 1995.

Sources

The Japan TimesPublished 12 September 2026 · checked 14 September 2026

Found through monitored feeds: The Japan Times. A feed address is how the desk finds a story, not the evidence for it — the sources listed above are the pages the facts were taken from.

How this story was checked

This story was written from the 1 page listed above, all read on 14 September 2026.
Every figure and identifier in the text was required to appear in that source text before publication; any that did not was removed rather than checked by memory.
Of the 3 reported statements recorded for this story, 3 are each traceable to a linked page and are shown above. The rest were dropped.
Quantities traced to the source text: yes; identifiers traced: yes.
Where the reporting was silent, the text says so instead of filling the gap. This is a reported story, not a review of the source.

Bank of Japan set to raise policy rate to 1.25%, a level last seen in April 1995

What the reporting says

Our view

Sources

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