Japan is looking to the country’s $7 trillion household savings ‌hoard ​to support bond demand with plans to launch new ‌products and incentives, building on hot recent retail sales and filling a void left by diminished central bank buying.

Efforts to attract Japanese households ​are not new — in 2010, the finance ministry created a mascot Kokusai-sensei, or Professor JGB, to pitch the securities and later even offered gold coins to buyers of special reconstruction bonds.

But where mascots and shiny ‍metals struggled, higher yields have succeeded in drawing in ​buyers this year. Retail Japanese government bond (JGB) sales jumped 30.5% in 2025 to 5.28 trillion yen ($33.55 billion), the highest since 2007.

Enthused by strong momentum, at a meeting with more than a dozen institutional investors ​in late November, the ⁠finance ministry faced calls to step up efforts to attract retail buyers, minutes of the meeting released by the ministry showed.

Japan’s 10-year government bond yield jumped past the 2% ceiling for the first time in 26 years on Friday after the Bank of Japan (BOJ) raised interest rates to a three-decade high and signalled more policy tightening.

Households are seen as a key source ‌of new demand as the BOJ scales back its buying and commercial banks face limits to their bond-buying firepower from capital rules that curb interest rate risk.

With retail JGBs ​yielding ‌even less than the type sold to ‍banks, the securities have historically been a ⁠tough sell.

Domestic households own less than 2% of the 1.06 quadrillion yen in outstanding JGBs, and about half of Japan’s 2.20 quadrillion yen in household financial assets sit in cash or low-yield deposits.

Source: money.usnews