Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi opened the extraordinary Diet session with a policy speech making a food consumption-tax cut the top priority, pledging no new bond issuance and unveiling a five-year growth strategy. Coverage tracked her repeated references to markets and fiscal sustainability, muted tone on security and constitutional revision, and opposition criticism over missing funding details.
She also called the alleged robbery-murder of a 39-year-old woman in Naha by a U.S. Marine extremely regrettable, as Tokyo lodged a strong protest with Washington and Okinawa's governor prepared to protest to the government.
Farm minister Kazuo Yan retracted his claim to have cut road budgets for unsupportive municipalities, apologized and refused to resign, with Takaichi keeping him on.
Markets reclaimed 70,000 intraday on fading U.S. rate-hike bets, while the Nobel physiology prize went to three U.S. and German optogenetics pioneers.