Japan's outstanding government debt stood at 1,323,363.2 billion yen at the end of September, down 23,320.1 billion yen from the end of June, the Ministry of Finance said on Tuesday, 10 November. It was the first fall in the debt balance in two years, Jiji Press reported.

The drop was driven by the government's use of yen funds secured through large-scale currency interventions to redeem financing bills. In interventions in April-May and July-August, the government and the Bank of Japan bought more than 27 trillion yen to curb the depreciation of the Japanese currency, and the proceeds were used to pay down short-term government debt.

Financing bills fall sharply

The breakdown of the figures shows where the fall came from. Financing bills dropped by 25,500 billion yen to 68,899.4 billion yen, accounting for more than the whole of the overall decline. Borrowings fell by 921.9 billion yen to 39,615.5 billion yen.

General government bonds, by contrast, continued to rise. They increased by 4,252 billion yen to a record high of 1,115,135.9 billion yen, showing that the underlying stock of long-term borrowing is still growing even as the total balance fell.

Debt per person

With Japan's estimated population at 122.69 million as of 1 October, the debt per person was about 10.79 million yen. Japan carries one of the heaviest government debt burdens of any major economy, and the latest figures underline how much of the movement in the total now depends on short-term financing bills and currency operations rather than on the slower trend in bond issuance.

The Ministry of Finance publishes the central government debt figures each quarter, and the end-of-September release is listed on its official data page alongside the end-of-June and end-of-March releases for 2026, according to the Ministry of Finance.

Why the interventions matter

Japan intervened heavily in the currency market this year as the yen weakened, with the government and the central bank buying yen and selling dollars in two waves, in April-May and again in July-August. The yen funds raised through those operations were then used to redeem financing bills, which are short-term securities the government issues to manage its cash needs.

That mechanism explains why the total debt balance could fall for the first time in two years while bond issuance kept rising. The fall reflects a one-off use of intervention funds rather than a change in the government's borrowing plans, and the record level of outstanding government bonds shows the long-term debt load remains intact.

The figures will be watched closely by markets and by policymakers in Tokyo, where the cost of servicing the debt and the direction of the yen remain central questions for the economy.