Japan's Ministry of Finance publishes one table, four times a year, that adds up what the central government owes. The page is in Japanese.
The bottom line of the latest one reads: 13,466,833.
The unit, printed above the table, is ¥100 million. So that line is about ¥1,347 trillion.
That is the figure as of the end of June 2026. The page is dated August 10.
We are going to read that table, line by line. This is not investment advice, and we take no view on whether this is sustainable. We are translating a government document.
The three lines that make the total
The table has three top-level lines.
- Domestic bonds: about ¥1,212 trillion. By our arithmetic, that is about 90% of the total.
- Borrowings: about ¥40.5 trillion.
- Government short-term securities (the page's own term): about ¥94 trillion.
Bonds, borrowings, short-term securities. Those three make the total.
There is a footnote you should not skip. It says these figures include government bonds held by the state itself, and borrowing inside the government. So this is a gross number. The page does not give a net one.
Inside the bonds
The largest item inside the bond line is what the page calls ordinary government bonds: about ¥1,111 trillion. The page splits those by maturity.
- Long-term (10 years or more): about ¥858 trillion
- Medium-term (2 to 5 years): about ¥212 trillion
- Short-term (1 year or less): about ¥41 trillion
By our arithmetic, the long-term line is about 77% of ordinary bonds.
Two items are shown in brackets inside that line. Reconstruction bonds: about ¥4.2 trillion. And a newer one, which translates as GX economy transition bonds: about ¥5.1 trillion.
Below ordinary bonds there is a separate line for bonds of the fiscal investment and loan special account: about ¥88 trillion.
What moved in three months
The right-hand column shows the change from the end of the previous quarter. For this release, that is the end of March, which is also the end of Japan's fiscal year.
The total rose by about ¥2.8 trillion. Inside that, the lines moved in different directions.
- Long-term ordinary bonds: up about ¥5.7 trillion
- Medium-term: up about ¥3.8 trillion
- Short-term: down about ¥2.9 trillion
- Borrowings: down about ¥3.8 trillion
- Government short-term securities: up about ¥2.1 trillion
The page gives the changes. It does not give a reason for any of them.
The second table, and what the page does not say
There is a second, much shorter table: government-guaranteed debt. This is debt of other bodies that the government has guaranteed. It is not inside the total above. About ¥27.4 trillion.
Three things this page does not tell you, and so we will not either.
- It does not say who holds these bonds.
- It does not compare the total with the size of the economy.
- It does not say why any line rose or fell.
What it does say, in one table, is this. At the end of June 2026, Japan's central government had about ¥1,347 trillion of bonds, borrowings and short-term securities outstanding, counted gross. About ¥2.8 trillion more than three months earlier.
The page says the next release, for the end of September, is scheduled for November 10. We will read it again then.
Source
Ministry of Finance, Japan — 国債及び借入金並びに政府保証債務現在高（令和8年6月末現在）, released August 10, 2026: https://www.mof.go.jp/jgbs/reference/gbb/202606.html
All amounts on the page are in units of ¥100 million (億円). Trillion-yen figures and percentages are LeakSquare's arithmetic (for example, 13,466,833 × ¥100 million = ¥1,346.7 trillion; 12,117,466 ÷ 13,466,833 ≈ 90%; 8,579,217 ÷ 11,108,839 ≈ 77%). English names of bond types are LeakSquare's translations. This is a reading of public documents. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation to buy or sell any security.