Bank of Japan's JGB holdings fall to 505.3 trillion yen, 52.9 trillion less than a year ago
Victoria Shinder1 min readThe Bank of Japan published its accounts for 31 October 2026 on 4 November. They show holdings of Japanese government securities of 505.28 trillion yen and total assets of 626.19 trillion yen.
A year earlier, in the accounts for 31 October 2025, government securities stood at 558.16 trillion yen and total assets at 696.35 trillion yen. That is a decline of about 52.9 trillion yen, or roughly 9.5%, in JGB holdings and of about 70.2 trillion yen in total assets over twelve months, by our calculation from the two releases. Against the previous ten-day account, for 20 October, JGB holdings were up by about 1.3 trillion yen.
On the liability side, current deposits held by financial institutions at the Bank were 418.46 trillion yen, compared with 497.69 trillion a year earlier, and banknotes in circulation were 114.18 trillion yen. Among other assets, the Bank still held 36.93 trillion yen of exchange-traded funds held in trust, 650 billion yen of real estate investment trusts and 68.42 trillion yen of loans.
What it means
The year-on-year comparison shows the scale of the Bank's balance-sheet reduction, which works mainly through bonds maturing faster than they are replaced; ten-day figures can move either way around that trend. The ETF line is the part of the old programme that has barely moved.