Former BoJ Governor Kuroda says the BoJ will likely consider raising interest rates at each upcoming meeting and he supports his successor's push to unwind extremely loose monetary policy, while former Deputy Wakatabe urges caution

Former BoJ Governor Kuroda says the BoJ will likely consider raising interest rates at each upcoming meeting and he supports his successor's push to unwind extremely loose monetary policy, while former Deputy Wakatabe urges caution.

Commentary from former BoJ governors historically functions as a soft signalling channel in Japan rather than a market-moving event in its own right; Kuroda's tenure defined the easing architecture now being unwound, so his endorsement of the successor's normalisation carries weight as validation of the current path rather than new information about it. The split between Kuroda's per-meeting framing and Wakatabe's caution mirrors the divide that has run through every BoJ tightening cycle: consecutive-hike rhetoric has tended to overstate the realised pace, with the Bank historically pausing to assess wage and consumption data between moves. The distinction that matters for pricing is whether 'each meeting' implies a fixed cadence or simply keeps hikes live at each decision, the former repricing the front end of the JGB curve and the yen rate differential, the latter leaving optionality intact. Follow-ons worth noting are whether sitting board members echo the per-meeting language, since ex-official advocacy has on past occasions preceded rather than accompanied actual decisions, and how the remarks interact with upcoming wage negotiation outcomes and the Tankan. As retired-official commentary, the signal is directional and second-order relative to the policy board's own communications.