00:00Japan's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Tokyo and Washington have been coordinating closely on currency policy
00:08in comments that may ease market concerns over Japan's recent suspected yen intervention.
00:14After talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant in Tokyo,
00:18Katayama said both sides agreed to maintain close communication on foreign exchange moves.
00:26Katayama said she confirmed with Besant that Japan was responding to currency moves
00:31in line with a joint statement signed with the U.S. last September
00:35that allowed for foreign exchange intervention to combat excessive market volatility.
00:41Markets are watching for signs of U.S. tolerance toward Tokyo's recent efforts to support the weakening yen.
00:48Japan is believed to have first intervened in the currency market on April 30th
00:53after the Bank of Japan, BOJ, kept monetary policy unchanged
00:57and hawkish signals from the U.S. Federal Reserve pushed the yen past 160 to the dollar.
01:03A Bloomberg analysis of revised BOJ data suggested
01:06Tokyo may have spent more than $54 billion across two rounds of yen-buying intervention.
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