On October 6, 2026, Japan's Ministry of Finance auctioned its 10-year government bond, issue No. 384. The same day, it published the result as a single page, in Japanese. The page has no chart and no commentary. It is a numbered list.
One line in it reads, in translation, "lowest accepted price": 99 yen 97 sen. Beside it, in brackets, is a yield: 3.103%.
We are going to read that page, line by line. 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.
The bond
The first five items describe the bond. Its formal name is 利付国庫債券（10年）（第384回）: interest-bearing government bond (10-year) (No. 384).
- Coupon (the page calls it the "face interest rate"): 3.1% a year
- Issue date: October 7, 2026
- Redemption date: September 20, 2036
The page writes its dates in the Japanese era calendar. The western years are our conversion.
The price-competitive auction
Item 6 is the price-competitive auction. The name means that bidders compete on price. Two amounts come first.
- Amount of bids: ¥7.4011 trillion (printed as 7兆4,011億円)
- Amount accepted: ¥1.9661 trillion (printed as 1兆9,661億円)
Japanese counts large sums in trillions (兆) and in units of 100 million (億). We have only moved the decimal point.
There the page stops. Dividing the bids by the amount accepted gives what is often called the bid-to-cover ratio. By our arithmetic, 74,011 ÷ 19,661 = 3.7644, or about 3.76. That number is ours; it is not printed on the page. The page does not say what a usual ratio would be, and it shows no earlier auction to set this one against.
The prices
- Lowest accepted price: 99 yen 97 sen, that is ¥99.97. In brackets beneath it, the highest accepted yield: 3.103%
- Pro-rata ratio at the lowest accepted price: 71.1197%
- Average accepted price: 99 yen 99 sen, that is ¥99.99. In brackets, the average accepted yield: 3.101%
A sen is one hundredth of a yen. The page does not state the base of the price. By convention, Japanese government bond prices are quoted per 100 yen of face value.
The Japanese term for the pro-rata ratio means allotment in proportion. The page prints the ratio and does not explain it, so neither will we.
By our arithmetic, the average price and the lowest price are 2 sen apart (99.99 − 99.97 = 0.02 yen), and the two yields are 0.002 of a percentage point apart (3.103 − 3.101). In writing about auctions, the distance between the average and the lowest accepted price is often called the tail. The Ministry's page does not use that word, and it does not print that number.
The two other auctions on the page
Item 7 is the non-competitive auction.
- Amount of bids: ¥1.854 billion (printed as 18億5,400万円)
- Amount accepted: ¥1.854 billion, the same figure
Item 8 has a long name: the non-price competitive auction I for Japanese government bond market special participants. For this one the page gives no amount of bids, only an amount accepted.
- Amount accepted: ¥631.5 billion (printed as 6,315億円)
For both auctions, the issue price printed is 99 yen 99 sen, with 3.101% in brackets. Those are the same two figures as the average line of the price-competitive auction.
By our arithmetic, the 3 accepted amounts on this page add up to about ¥2.5995 trillion (19,661 + 6,315 + 18.54 = 25,994.54, in units of 100 million yen). The page itself prints no total.
At the foot of the page
Two last things. The first is marked "reference". It reads: the compound yield that serves as the base rate for the floating-rate 10-year government bond for individuals, 3.10%. This page prints only that one figure about it.
The second is a sentence. From 2 p.m. the same day, based on the result of this price-competitive auction, a second non-price competitive auction (auction II) is held for the special participants, with the issue price set at the average accepted price. Its result is not on this page.
What the page does not say
Three things this page does not tell you, and so we will not either.
- It does not say who bid, or whose bids were accepted.
- It does not compare this auction with any earlier one.
- It does not say why the prices and the yields came out where they did.
What it does say is this. On October 6, 2026, in the price-competitive auction of this 10-year bond, the Ministry of Finance received bids of ¥7.4011 trillion and accepted ¥1.9661 trillion. The lowest accepted price was ¥99.97, beside a yield of 3.103%. The average accepted price was ¥99.99, beside 3.101%.
The Ministry publishes a page like this for each auction. We will read it again.
Source
Ministry of Finance, Japan — 10年利付国債（第384回）の入札結果, October 6, 2026: https://www.mof.go.jp/jgbs/auction/calendar/nyusatsu/resul20261006.htm
Amounts, prices and yields are as printed, converted from Japanese units. The ratio of bids to the amount accepted (3.76), the price gap (0.02 yen), the yield gap (0.002 of a percentage point) and the sum of accepted amounts (about ¥2.5995 trillion) are LeakSquare's arithmetic; none of them is printed on the page. This is a reading of a public document. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation to buy or sell any security.