Japan's stock of cash shrank again in July, as it has in every month the Bank of Japan prints in this release, while the money held in time deposits grew at 4.3 percent

¥109.9tn. That is how much cash was in circulation in Japan last month, and it is less than there was a year ago.

The Bank of Japan published preliminary money stock figures for July on Wednesday morning in Tokyo. Currency in circulation fell 1.2 percent from a year earlier. It has now fallen in every month the release prints, all fourteen of them, and in each of 2024 and 2025 taken as a whole.

That is the only line in the table going backwards.

The ladder

Everything above cash is growing, and the further up you go the faster it grows.

M1, which is cash plus money in current accounts, rose 0.1 percent to ¥1,090.5tn. Call it flat. Quasi-money, which is chiefly time deposits, rose 4.3 percent to ¥528.9tn. M2 rose 2.2 percent and M3 rose 1.4 percent. Broadly defined liquidity, the widest measure the Bank publishes, rose 4.4 percent to ¥2,338.4tn, which is the fastest rate in the release.

The components of that widest measure carry the same shape. Investment trusts grew 13.1 percent to ¥126.0tn. Holdings of government securities grew 18.8 percent to ¥47.2tn. Pecuniary trusts, the largest single component after M3, grew 11.8 percent to ¥487.5tn.

One number that is not what it looks like

Commercial paper issued by financial institutions is shown growing 166.7 percent. The amount outstanding is ¥0.0tn, which is to say it rounds to zero at the precision the table uses. A rate of change on a base that small is arithmetic rather than news, and it is printed here only because the release prints it.

The Bank notes that figures from February 2026 onwards have been revised, and marks the revised cells individually. These are preliminary figures.

What the release does not do

It does not explain anything. The money stock release is a table with two pages of footnotes and no commentary, so the reason cash is shrinking while time deposits grow is not in the document, and no reason is offered here. The Bank held its policy rate at its July meeting, and said nothing in this publication about either.