JAPAN’s public is finally getting the message that the central bank is determined to beat deflation. The weekend after Haruhiko Kuroda, the Bank of Japan’s new governor, announced radical monetary-easing measures, a newly-formed girl band with the catchy name of “Business on the streets of Japan” took to a Tokyo stage. The artists, a group of high-school and university students, pledged to remove their skirts if the Nikkei, Japan’s benchmark share index, hit 13,000 after the central bank’s announcement. Both the Nikkei and the band delivered (see chart).
