On August 7, 2026, Japan's Ministry of Finance published a short page, in Japanese. Its title, in the Ministry's own English wording, is Foreign Exchange Intervention Operations. It covers April to June 2026.
The first line is a total: 11兆7,349億円, that is ¥11.7349 trillion. Under it is a table with 3 dates.
We are going to read that table, and the pages the Ministry publishes around it. This is not investment advice, and we take no view on whether any of this is good or bad. We are translating a government document.
What the statistic is
The Ministry's index page for this statistic carries a general description. In translation: exchange rates are basically determined in the market, by supply and demand, reflecting the economic fundamentals of each country. But it is not desirable for exchange rates to move in an unstable way, such as departing from fundamentals because of speculation and the like, or moving sharply in a short period. So, to stabilise exchange rates, the currency authorities sometimes carry out foreign exchange transactions in the market. In brackets, the page adds one word: intervention.
That describes the statistic in general, not any particular day.
The same page gives the timetable. The total is published every month. The details (the date, the amount and the currencies) are published every quarter.
The quarterly table
The table has 3 columns: 実施日 (date of operation), 金額 (amount) and 売買通貨 (currencies sold and bought).
- April 30, 2026: ¥6.2787 trillion (printed as 6兆2,787億円)
- May 4, 2026: ¥780.2 billion (printed as 7,802億円)
- May 6, 2026: ¥4.6759 trillion (printed as 4兆6,759億円)
Japanese counts large sums in trillions (兆) and in units of 100 million (億). We have only moved the decimal point. The page writes its dates in the Japanese era calendar; the western years are our conversion.
The third column is the same in all 3 rows: 米ドル売り 日本円買い, US dollar selling, Japanese yen buying. That is everything the table prints. There is no exchange rate, no amount in dollars, and no time of day.
One detail. By our arithmetic, the 3 daily amounts add up to 117,348 in units of 100 million yen (62,787 + 7,802 + 46,759). The printed total is 117,349, which is 1 unit higher. The quarterly page does not comment on this. The Ministry's data file of all past operations does carry a note; in translation: because the figures for each day are rounded, their sum may not match the total.
The monthly pages
Each monthly page is a single line: a period, and an amount.
- April 28 – May 27, 2026 (released May 29): ¥11.7349 trillion, the same total as the quarter
- May 28 – June 26, 2026 (released June 30): ¥0
- June 29 – July 29, 2026 (released July 31): ¥0
- July 30 – August 26, 2026 (released August 28): ¥15.3993 trillion (printed as 15兆3,993億円)
- August 27 – September 28, 2026 (released September 30, the latest): ¥0
The August 28 page gives no operation dates and no currencies. It does not say what was sold or bought. According to the Ministry's schedule, the daily figures for July to September 2026 are due between November 2 and November 9, 2026.
The file that goes back to 1991
The Ministry also publishes one file with every operation since April 1991, in units of 100 million yen. Its recent quarterly totals:
- July–September 2022: ¥2.8382 trillion (28,382)
- October–December 2022: ¥6.3499 trillion (63,499)
- April–June 2024: ¥9.7885 trillion (97,885)
- July–September 2024: ¥5.5348 trillion (55,348)
- October 2024 to March 2026: 6 quarters, each 0
- April–June 2026: ¥11.7349 trillion (117,349)
Every row in the 4 quarters of 2022 and 2024 is marked US dollar selling, Japanese yen buying.
By our reading of that file, the largest quarterly total in it is January–March 2004: ¥14.8314 trillion (148,314). Every row in that quarter is marked the other way: dollar buying, yen selling. The largest single day is October 31, 2011, at ¥8.0722 trillion (80,722), also marked dollar buying. Among days marked dollar selling, yen buying, the largest is April 30, 2026. The Ministry prints no ranking. These comparisons are ours.
What the pages do not say
3 things these pages do not tell you, and so we will not either.
- They do not give the exchange rate at which any of this was done, or the amount in dollars.
- They do not say why the operations took place on those days.
- They do not say whether, or when, there will be another one.
What they do say is this. For April to June 2026, the Ministry of Finance's table lists 3 days, each marked US dollar selling, Japanese yen buying, for a total of ¥11.7349 trillion. For July 30 to August 26, 2026, it has published only a monthly total, ¥15.3993 trillion, with no dates and no currencies.
The Ministry publishes the total every month and the dates every quarter. We will read them again.
Source
Ministry of Finance, Japan — 外国為替平衡操作の実施状況(令和8年4月～令和8年6月), August 7, 2026: https://www.mof.go.jp/policy/international_policy/reference/feio/data/quarter/2026_2Q.html. Monthly pages, the file of all operations and the release schedule: https://www.mof.go.jp/policy/international_policy/reference/feio/data/index.html
Amounts are as printed, converted from Japanese units. The sum of the 3 daily amounts (117,348) and the comparisons across the Ministry's file are LeakSquare's arithmetic and reading; they are not printed in the documents. This is a reading of public documents. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation to buy or sell any security or currency.