Japanese inflation data from earlier, details are here

I'm just looking at the various wires and collating some of the comments/responses...

Reuters:

  • Japan's core consumer prices marked the first annual drop since the central bank deployed its massive stimulus program more than two years ago, first decline since April 2013
  • Keeping alive market expectations of further monetary easing
  • Data adds to a recent run of poor indicators
  • Junichi Makino, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities. "If so, there's not much point delaying it," he said, adding that he expects the BOJ to ease either next month or in April next year

More at Reuters

FT (via Fast FT, gated):

  • prices turning negative in August ... raising the pressure on the central bank to ramp up its monetary stimulus programme again later this year
  • 2% inflation target still looks way off ... most recent data show prices going backward at the core level
  • Economists expect the Bank of Japan will have to expand it QQE programme, probably at its October meeting
  • so-called core-core inflation (strips out food and energy prices) ... to its highest level since March ... suggesting with oil out of the picture, prices are creeping higher

Bloomberg:

  • Japan's main inflation gauge dropped into negative territory
  • Weak domestic demand and plunging oil prices wiped out the impact of Kuroda's unprecedented monetary stimulus
  • October is shaping up as key a month for the BOJ ... almost one-third of economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecasting the BOJ will add to its stimulus when it updates its estimates for growth and inflation
  • "The drop in prices brings more unpleasant news for the BOJ," Masamichi Adachi, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and former BOJ official, said before Friday's report by the statistics bureau. "It's getting harder to defend keeping policy unchanged."
  • "The impact of falling energy cost will peak out this fall," said Mari Iwashita, the chief market economist at SMBC Friend Securities Co. in Tokyo, who doesn't see any need for further stimulus in October.

-

More at all of those links above, but you get the idea.