With the Bank of Japan's interest rate meeting approaching, the market highly anticipates a rate hike, and the governor's health is a key market variable.

According to Mars Finance, on June 11th, ahead of the Bank of Japan's policy meeting scheduled for June 15th-16th, an unexpected factor caused market expectations regarding communication to fluctuate. On June 10th, the Bank of Japan announced that its 74-year-old Governor, Kazuo Ueda, had been hospitalized due to an infected liver cyst and was expected to be unable to attend next week's meeting, but would express his personal position through a written statement. Since the Bank of Japan established its current policy decision-making mechanism in 1998, there has never been a case of a governor missing a routine policy meeting. It should be noted that the current mainstream market expectation points to a 25 basis point interest rate hike, with a 98% probability of this event on Polymarket. If the meeting results in an expected interest rate hike, any hints about the pace of subsequent rate hikes could become a key variable in the foreign exchange market at the press conference following the policy announcement. According to Reuters and other media citing analysts, if Ueda's health problems persist, it could provide the Prime Minister with room to influence the Bank of Japan's policy direction in the future, especially regarding the selection of the governor—in the event of a change in governor, the successor must be nominated by the Prime Minister.