Tokyo inflation excluding fresh food and energy is back at 2.0 percent, and rent supplied the largest single push

Rent is doing more to lift Tokyo's inflation rate than anything else in the basket.

Japan's Statistics Bureau publishes the consumer price index for the ku-area of Tokyo two to three weeks ahead of the national figure, as a leading indicator, and it released the August reading at half past eight on Friday morning. The all items index stood at 102.4 on a 2025 base, up 1.9 percent on a year earlier and 0.2 percent on July after seasonal adjustment. Excluding fresh food, which is the measure the Bank of Japan watches, it rose 1.8 percent. Excluding fresh food and energy as well, it rose 2.0 percent. Hold that last one.

On the restated 2025-base series that measure bottomed at 1.5 percent in May, then read 1.7 percent in June and 1.8 percent in July. August is its third consecutive rise and its highest reading since March. This is also the first Tokyo report on the 2025 base, four weeks after the national report moved to it, so the July figure quoted here is the restated one rather than the number the Bureau published on 31 July.

Services, and one landlord line

The Bureau publishes a list of what pushed the headline rate, with each item's contribution beside it, and the largest single entry on the rising side of that list is rent. It rose 1.9 percent over the year and contributed 0.46 points, with privately let rents up 2.0 percent. Eating out came next, up 5.0 percent and worth 0.31 points, and inside that line restaurant sushi rose 20.0 percent. Prepared foods rose 3.1 percent, with boxed bento up 26.7 percent. Fresh fish and shellfish rose 12.9 percent and tuna 21.6 percent. Meat rose 4.4 percent, domestic beef 10.2 percent, confectionery 3.8 percent, fresh vegetables 5.1 percent and cucumbers 28.4 percent. Coffee beans rose 31.2 percent.

Set above several of those lines is a broader grouping, food excluding fresh food, which rose 3.6 percent and contributed 0.83 points. The transport and communication group added two entries of its own. Motor vehicle related costs rose 2.5 percent for 0.12 points, and the transport sub-category 3.6 percent for 0.10, with ordinary JR fares up 9.1 percent.

Energy pulled the other way, and a tax cut sits inside it

The energy group fell 2.0 percent over the year and took 0.09 points off the headline rate, against 0.03 points in July, which is the largest change among the items the Bureau lists as having moved the rate between the two months. Electricity did most of it, down 2.4 percent on the year and 8.6 percent on the month alone. City gas fell 1.6 percent and petrol 2.7 percent. Kerosene rose 11.6 percent.

The Bureau also publishes an estimate, and marks it as an estimate, of what the abolition of the provisional petrol tax rate and related policy is doing to these figures. It puts the effect on energy at minus 0.27 points, made up of minus 0.52 points from the current month and plus 0.25 points as the year-earlier effect drops out. Electricity carries minus 0.12 of that and petrol minus 0.10.

The largest single line in the whole release is still the one that was there in July. Nursery school fees are recorded at minus 100.0 percent over the year and take 0.50 points off the headline rate on their own, with the miscellaneous sub-category containing them at minus 26.4 percent. Nothing can fall further. A price index has no room below minus 100 percent, so the reading means the surveyed fee is now nil, and the Bureau offers no account of why it is what it is.