BoJ Governor Ueda says the Bank is gathering information on how the Kumamoto earthquake is affecting the economy and prices

Central banks in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster have historically separated the supply shock from the policy signal: the standard sequence is a data-gathering statement, a period in which the event is treated as a reason to defer rather than to act, and only later a judgment on whether the disruption is disinflationary via demand or inflationary via supply bottlenecks. In Japan the distinction carries extra weight because past episodes of regional seismic damage have hit concentrated industrial supply chains, including semiconductor and auto production clustered in the affected prefecture, which transmits through factory output and export volumes rather than through the price level directly. Ueda's pairing of steady growth language with an unchanged projection is the familiar holding pattern: the Bank preserves optionality on the timing of further normalisation without conceding that the shock has altered the path. The case split that matters is whether the quake becomes a pretext for pushing out the next hike or is absorbed as transient; JGBs and the yen have in comparable episodes reacted most to the first explicit mention of downside risk to the outlook, which is not present here. The follow-ons are the assessment in subsequent commentary and the next Outlook Report, plus whether other board members echo the information-gathering framing.