Yen intervention official Mimura says fin min Kato met with US TreasSec Yellen on Thursday

Japan’s Finance Ministry’s Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura

• finance minister Kato met US Treasury Secretary Yellen on Thursday
• Kato and Yellne discussed recent FX moves in their meeting
• Says Japan and the US agreed to communicate closely on FX
• we have recently seen one-sided, sharp fx moves
• desirable for FX moves to reflect fundamentals
• we will be increasingly vigilant to FX moves including those driven by speculation

(I bolded the more strongly worded comments)

When USD/JPY was surging up towards 160 earlier this year Yellen met with the prior set of officials from the Ministry of Finance. Yellen was very cold on the idea of any US participation to support the yen.

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Cast of players:

• US Treasury Secretary Yellen
• Japan finance minister Kato
• Japan’s Finance Ministry’s Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura. He is the official who will instruct the BOJ to intervene, when he judges it necessary. Often referred to as Japan’s ‘top currency diplomat’.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.