Last year saw the highest-ever number of Japanese hair salons filing for bankruptcy at 235, breaking the record set in 2024 with 215 bankrupt hair stylists, JapanToday.com reported. This also had an effect on the average lifespan of salons, which could expect to survive for 13 years in 2025, down from 14.1 years in 2024. Also, of the currently active salons, 49 percent are less than 10 years old. To make matters much worse, many salons can’t even find enough staff to operate.

Japan likely spent around $34.5 billion Thursday in its first currency intervention to prop up the yen since July 2024, according to a Bloomberg analysis of central bank accounts. The scale of intervention was probably around ¥5.4 trillion, based on a comparison of Bank of Japan accounts released Friday and money broker forecasts. In 2024, authorities spent an average of ¥3.8 trillion on four occasions to support the yen. This was the first intervention under the direction of Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and the first since Sanae Takaichi became prime minister.

Japan has signed a $2.2 billion loan agreement for the first batch of ​projects under its $550 billion U.S. investment ‌pledge, kicking off financing tied to a trade deal that cut U.S. tariffs on Japanese ​imports to 15%, Reuters reported. State-owned Japan Bank for ​International Cooperation said on Friday it would ⁠provide about a third of the $2.2 ​billion financing, with the rest provided by ​commercial banks.

The Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady on Tuesday but three of its nine-member ​board proposed hiking borrowing costs, signalling policymakers' concerns over inflationary pressures from the Middle East conflict, Reuters reported. The central bank also sharply revised up its price forecasts and ‌stressed vigilance to the risk of an inflation overshoot, signaling a strong chance of a rate hike in coming months.

The Bank of Japan heads into its two-day policy meeting next week with the prospects for a rate increase dimming as economic uncertainties remain high due in part to the conflict in the Middle East, the Japan Times reported. “We expect that the BOJ will keep the policy rate steady,” UBS Securities economists Go Kurihara and Masamichi Adachi wrote in a report on Wednesday.

Japan will set up a task force to address cybersecurity risks in its financial ​system following concerns about potential vulnerabilities linked to ‌Anthropic's Mythos AI model, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said on Friday, Reuters reported. The decision was agreed at a meeting involving the Financial ​Services Agency, the Bank of Japan, the National ​Cybersecurity Office, the country's top three banks and ⁠Japan Exchange Group, Katayama told reporters.

Japan said it would provide about $10 billion in financial support to help Southeast Asian nations cope with soaring oil prices that threaten production of petroleum-derived products in the region, the New York Times reported. Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, announced the initiative on Wednesday at a regional forum that included Japan and major Southeast Asian economies such as Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. The pledge comes as much of Asia is being buffeted by disruptions in oil supplies stemming from the war in the Middle East.

An electric vehicle sales company based in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, has filed for bankruptcy protection with Tokyo District Court under the civil rehabilitation law, Nippon.com reported. The application, filed Tuesday, was accepted immediately, EV Motors Japan Co. said the same day. Liabilities left by EVMJ totaled 5.7 billion yen.