Bank of Japan (BoJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda was hospitalized for treatment of an infected liver cyst and will miss the 15-16 Jun policy meeting, the central bank said on Wednesday. It is the first time a BoJ governor has missed a scheduled meeting since the current policy framework began in 1998.
BoJ Set to Hike Without Ueda, Signalling in Doubt
11 June 2026 - 07:21 CEST
By Oihyun Kim
The board, reduced to eight, is widely expected to lift the policy rate from 0.75% to 1%, its highest since 1995. Three of nine members already backed a hike in April, with two more aligning since. Overnight index swaps briefly dipped to 73% on Thursday morning before retracing most of the move, according to Bloomberg data.
Ueda's 3 Jun speech, which framed inflation risks from the Iran conflict as potentially outweighing growth shocks, is widely read as having paved the way.
Deputy sets the tone
Less settled is what comes next. Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida, a 1986 BoJ entrant who helped design the bank's massive easing under former Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, is regarded inside the BoJ as a policy 'key man'. He had been in the hospital since November 2025 for leukemia treatment, and was discharged in late May. Tuesday's session will be his first public press conference since.
At past appearances, Uchida has cooled overheated hike bets, most visibly in February and August 2024. This time, he steps in with the move already priced in. Deputy Governor Ryozo Himino will chair the meeting itself.
"The point of focus is how far he goes in flagging upside inflation risks, given uncertainty over the Middle East," Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities, told Nikkei. She characterizes Uchida as a pragmatist rather than a committed hawk or dove.
Carry trade pressure rebuilds
In December 2025, Ueda's perceived caution about the pace of the hikes weakened the yen after the decision. The currency trades near 160 per dollar, a level that has triggered official intervention before. A repeat would carry beyond FX, given crypto's growing yen-funding exposure.
Past BoJ hikes have unwound carry trades, in which yen-funded risk assets get sold as borrowing costs rise. After the BoJ raised interest rates to 0.25% on 31 Jul 2024, Bitcoin (BTC) slid from around $65,000 to below $50,000 in early August, according to CoinGecko data.
Japan's listed Bitcoin treasury firms, such as Metaplanet, which has expanded its holdings through a series of debt and equity issuances, face higher yen funding costs. Domestic exchanges such as bitFlyer and SBI VC Trade are exposed through retail flows that are sensitive to yen volatility. Ueda is expected to return for the 30-31 Jul meeting.
