TOKYO, April 12, 2024–April 1 is the first day of Japan’s new business year. Young people starting work for the first time and students entering school are welcomed at entrance ceremonies against the backdrop of cherry flower pedals play in the spring breeze. People, fauna and flora and houses all look being uplifted and smiling.
Not this spring.
The weather was nasty. Strong, cold, typhoon-grade powerful winds with occasional downpour, clearly a climate change impact, ruthlessly whipped them all, disabling ceremonies and ubiquitous sakura (cherry) flower parties under the open skies.
Even more chilling than the frigid spring for people was what economists termed a inflation third wave carrying goods and service prices of all conceivable items, from more than 2,800 groceries, parcel delivery fees, National Health Insurance premiums for people over 75 years, ending of government subsidies for Covid-19 vaccines, NHI premium surcharges to finance proactive child birth programs. Numerous other prices and fees have gone up, such as museum and park admissions.
The hike, which began two years ago, has roughly doubled Japan’s grocery inflation to date and restaurant prices even more, economist said.
The third wave rise coincided with the country’s most popular tourism season, though the fowl weather appeared to have preempted the over-crowing of popular tourist spots such as Kyoto. And yet, the tourist season just started, with more than 20 million Japanese people projected to travel during the late-April to May 5 Golden Week vacation period.
Most starred hotels are filling up and the effect is rippling to so-called business hotels, the accommodations for local traveling workers, where rates have nearly doubled year-on-year.
The bottomline: combined with the yen’s fresh decent against the U.S. dollar and other key currencies, Japan’s CPI inflation is threatening to go sharply higher over the country’s target inflation of 2 percent.
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