这是经济学人网站上关于日本加息最新报道。

    IT WAS third time lucky for Toshihiko Fukui, the governor of the Bank of Japan (BoJ), in his bid to hike interest rates. In December and then again in January, he failed to persuade enough of the BoJ’s nine-member monetary-policy board to vote for an increase. But on Wednesday February 21st, after haggling with fellow members concerned about the economy’s fragile recovery, he finally got his reward. The bank raised its benchmark rate a quarter of a percentage point to 0.5%, an eight-year high.

This week was his final chance to sneak a rate rise past politicians in Japan, before a season of heavy politicking begins. Shinzo Abe’s government faces local polls due in April and a fiercely contested Upper House election scheduled for July. It did not welcome this week’s decision, but it would have fought much harder against a rise in spring that would embarrass its candidates on the stump.

As it was, the prime minister’s hatchet-men had to be restrained from using the heavy-handed methods that inhibited a rate rise last time. Chastened by the global reaction, Mr Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party realised it had overstepped the mark by bullying the central bank so overtly. It will take the BoJ a long time to recover its international credibility as an independent custodian of Japanese monetary policy.

    Despite the political teeth-gnashing, Mr Fukui has been anxious to wean Japan off its addiction to cheap money. He does not want to repeat the bank’s mistakes of the 1980s, when its easy monetary policy created a bubble economy. The bubble’s collapse brought the country’s banking system to its knees, and condemned Japan to 15 years of deflation. To prevent a reprise, Mr Fukui has insisted that the bank adopt a more forward-looking approach, instead of having to react hastily to news from the market.

    A year ago, the BoJ declared deflation dead and ended its five-year experiment with “quantitative easing”, which involved flooding the market with excess liquidity. Confident that the worst was behind it, the bank raised rates last July from zero to 0.25%. Ever since, the governor has been itching to raise them again. The BoJ has been held back until now by the erratic state of the economy. After a bleak third quarter the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.8% in the three months to December—its fastest pace in three years. Much of the gain was due to stronger personal spending, though this was partly just a rebound from the previous quarter. But it still cheered the BoJ.

    It is counting on consumption, which accounts for 55% of Japanese GDP, to become the locomotive of the economy. Households are certainly spending what they have. According to the OECD, Japan’s household saving rate has fallen by over eight percentage points since 1998. Households now fail to spend just 2.9% of their disposable income. Unfortunately, that income is not yet rising as quickly as it might. The weak yen and low interest rates have helped companies to make record profits, but the money is failing to filter through into wages. No longer protected by import restrictions or indulged by docile Japanese consumers, willing to pay through the nose, corporate Japan is feeling the hot breath of global competition on its own doorstep for the first time. So firms are reluctant to spend on anything other than productivity-boosting plant and equipment.

    Thus even as Mr Fukui fears a return of the bubbly 1980s, others fret about a rerun of 2000, when the BoJ raised rates prematurely, deepening deflation. The economy has enjoyed five years of continuous growth since then. But it is still haunted by falling prices. Excluding food items, Japan’s consumer inflation was only 0.1% in the year to December. And retreating energy costs may yet snuff out even this meagre price rise.

     But Mr Fukui’s sights are set further ahead. He makes policy according to the inflation outlook about two years down the road. Over that horizon, Japan’s recovering economy will surely begin to press against its supply-side limits, pushing up wages and prices. Mr Fuki’s forward-looking policy has something to look forward to.