The BoJ publishes Japan's repo data on the BIS template
Victoria Shinder1 min readThe Bank of Japan maintains a published series on securities financing transactions - the repo and securities-lending activity that funds dealer inventories - at http://www.boj.or.jp/en/statistics/bis/repo/index.htm. The page is the Japanese contribution to a BIS data collection, which is what makes it more than a domestic statistic.
What it means
Securities financing is the plumbing that decides whether a bond market has depth, and it is usually invisible until it fails. A dealer holds inventory because it can finance that inventory overnight; when the financing market tightens, the dealer's willingness to quote shrinks first and the price impact of an ordinary trade rises. A repo series is therefore an early view of the condition of the cash market that sits on top of it.
The BIS framing is the part that matters for anyone comparing countries. Data collected to a common template can be set beside other jurisdictions; data collected to a national one usually cannot. Since the question people actually ask about Japanese repo is how it compares with the US and Europe, a series designed for comparison is worth more than a richer series that is unique.
⚠️ We are describing a statistical series, not reporting a move in it. No figure is quoted here; the values belong to the Bank's own tables, and any change should be read from them rather than from a description of the collection.