Structural Disposal and Cyclical Adjustment
Non-performing Loans, Structural Transition,
and Regulatory Reform in Japan, 1997–2011*
ISS Discussion Paper Series
F–167
February 2014
This version: July 2016
Toshiki Kawashima†
Masaki Nakabayashi‡
Institute of Social Science
The University of Tokyo

Abstract
Japan experienced falling asset prices, implemented financial market reforms, and wasforced to reduce non-performing loans from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. As themarket reform prompted the corporate sector to replace bank borrowing with bond flotation and hence the banking business shrank, a rapid reduction of non-performing loans
required a massive write-off of standing loans. We examine whether it was appropriate
for the regulatory authority to guide the banking sector to aggressively write off nonperforming loans in the early 2000s or to wait for cyclical recovery, along with the structural reform. We show that non-performing loans could have been cyclically reduced only
by a further extension of mortgage loans, since the deregulated corporate sector scaled
back its reliance on banking. Although a further deregulation of mortgage markets might
have enable cyclical reduction in non-performing loans, structural non-performing loan
disposal is justifiable if another housing market bubble was to be avoided.
Key words: non-performing loan; regulatory reform; mortgage loan; Japan.
JEL: G18; G28; K23.
* The authors thank Mathias Hoffman, Guangling Liu, Naoyuki Yoshino, Hitoshi Takehana, and the participants at International Conference on Applied Financial Economics at Shanghai University, the Southwestern
Finance Association Conference, and a seminar held in the Financial Services Agency for their helpful comments. This research is supported by The Japan Securities Scholarship Foundation and JSPS KAKENHI Grant
Number JP22243022.
†
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
‡
Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo. Corresponding address: Institute of Social Science,
The University of Tokyo, Hongo 7–3–1, Tokyo 103–0033, Japan. E-mail: mn@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Introduction
Drastic deregulation of the financial market began in the United Kingdom and the UnitedStates in the 1980s, to be followed by Japan and continental Europe. These reforms visibly
expanded and augmented the functioning of the financial industry (Abiad and Mody (2005)).
Strict regulations in developed countries were largely a response to the drastic failure of thefinancial market in the 1930s. While these regulations were widely diverse—ranging fromstrengthened transparency in the United States to entry regulations in Japan—they shared theaim of containing the moral hazard of market participants and avoiding another Great Depression. Half-a-century later, as deregulation expanded and memories abated, deregulation
was implemented literally as de-regulation, that is, with no device to curb the moral hazardof market participants, for example, through enhanced ex-post inspection, to complement therelaxed entry restrictions. In particular, the commercial banking sector continued to enjoy
state protection, mainly to prevent destabilization of the real economy and to protect ordinary
households in possible financial turmoils, although its businesses were widely deregulated.
Naturally, countries implementing deregulation, including the United States, Japan and continental Europe,, experienced asset or housing bubbles, often worsened by the deregulatedbanking sector; these bubbles burst in the United States in the early 1980s, in Japan in theearly 1990s, and in Europe from the late 2000s. Japan experienced a world-record in nonperforming loans after the bubble burst only until being surpassed by the European financial
crises from the late 2000s. Because of its own size and similarity to the European experience,
the Japanese experience, of strengthened regulations and reduction in non-performing loansin particular, should have some lessons.
In 1996, the Japanese administration under premier Ryutaro Hashimoto recognized thenecessity of a thorough structural reform toward an even greater deregulation of market entry
with an empowered and independent monitoring authority. The structural reform planned by
the Hashimoto administration included the removal of entry restrictions, separation of inspection authority from the Ministry of Finance to the newly established Financial Supervisory
Agency (or FSA, later the Financial Services Agency), and allowing for the liquidation of
failing banks, even if they were “too big to fail” by the pre-reform standard, under transparent
and strict control by the agency. Further, the reform intended to transform Japanese corporate
financing from domination by the banking sector to a tilt towards bond issuance. In otherwords, the major banks that were heavily regulated and protected by the government and theprimary lenders to the competitive manufacturing industry were expected to have a reducedrole in corporate financing.
Meanwhile, as this structural reform was being implemented, the non-performing loans of
the major banks as well as regional banks kept piling up. The reforms meant to reduce therole of banks in corporate financing worsened the nation’s non-performing loan ratio, that is,
the number of non-performing loans as a proportion to total lending. The newly establishedindependent authority then imposed explicit measures to reduce non-performing loans. This
was largely a race between the major banks’ declining role in corporate financing and thesurge in non-performing loans, which reached its peak at the beginning of this century. The
Financial Services Agency set a bold and ambitious target for reducing the non-performing
loans of the major banks; this virtually implied the massive loan write-offs from 2002 to 2004.
1

The agency also recognized the critical role of regional banks in the corporate financing tosmall- and medium-sized companies in local economies and working of the relational banking(Uchida, Udell and Watanabe (2008) and Kano, Uchida, Udell and Watanabe (2011)). Thus,
the agency set modest targets for regional banks, allowing them to continue with relationalbanking and lend to players in the local real economies.
This experience—the simultaneous progress in the reduction of piled-up non-performing
loans and the structural reform for free and direct corporate financing, and preserving the keyrole of the relational banking network of regional banks in sustaining local economies and supporting small startups—is exactly the challenge that continental Europe has been facing since2008 and probably now China is now facing in the mid-2010s. We believe that a detailed
documentation and inquiry of the Japanese the experience will help enhance the performanceof European and Chinese regulators. In fact, even Japanese practitioners and scholars have
not yet achieved a consensus on their own experience. For instance, the current commissionerof the Financial Services Agency, Nobuchika Mori, appointed in July, 2015, casts reflective
and skeptical eyes on the side effects of strengthened regulations and non-performing loan
reduction implemented by the Financial Services Agency in the past two decades. He evenwarns European regulators not to be too much stringent when addressing the European banking system.1
It is rash to evaluate overall regulatory reforms in Japan from the late 1900s. Thus, we
focus on a more narrowly defined issue. The most stringent policy implemented by the Financial Services Agency was on reduction in non-performing loans in the early 2000s. For policy
implications, we ask whether the Financial Services Agency was too much stringent to force
the major banks to write off non-performing loans or not. In other words, we examine whether
non-performing loans could have been cyclically reduced or the stringent implementation ofwriting-off was inevitable during the structural reforms of the entire financial sector. Our conclusion is against Mr. Mori for this issue. The first option was not feasible as long as Japan
should avoid another housing market bubble. Stringent implementation of non-performing
reduction by the Financial Services Agency was correct and was unavoidable. A shrink of thebanking sector in the last two decades was due to transformation of corporate finance alongwith deregulation of bond markets, not because of too much stringent policy by the Financial
Services Agency.
Before going into detail, we briefly summarize the history of the Japanese financial sector.2
In the late nineteenth century, modern firms of the growing industrial sectors had high demandfor capital in the new financial markets, for this they directly relied on share and bond issuance.
The banking sector played an important role in share and bond investment. Investors borrowed
from banks by collateralizing the shares and bonds they held, and the borrowed money was
further invested in securities. These securities were then again collateralized by the investors
for their next round of investment. Thus, the banking sector performed a large role for ahighly leveraged investment. With its role in the reverse side of buoyant corporate financing
in the securities markets, corporate financing heavily depended on the securities markets in
1

Nobuchika Mori, “Too much ‘medicine’ could make the finance system sicker,” Financial Times, December
14, 2015.
2
For details of the wartime origin of the regulated banking sector, see Okazaki (1999) and Hoshi and Kashyap(2001), pp. 1–14.

2

the obverse side. Meanwhile, large conglomerates such as Mitsubishi and Mitusi maintained
closed internal capital markets until the 1920s and most of the important companies were notlisted. In the 1930s, these conglomerates switched to switch to public markets, thus allowing
the securities markets to grow further. The expansion of the securities markets and the financial
sector supporting the expansion were largely based on the nineteenth-century-style permissive
regulations.
The transition to heavy regulations took place in two steps, one following the financial crisis of 1927, and the other following the Great Depression from 1929. The Bank Act, Act No.
21 of 1927, gave greater authority to the Ministry of Finance to affect prompt consolidation of
unstable local banks (Okazaki and Sawada (2007)). In this phase, corporate financing was notseverely affected. The stock and bond markets were largely free. Bond issuance regulations
that required bonds to be collateralized were introduced in 1933 in order to protect investors.
Direct corporate financing was still buoyant, and, with the support of the consolidated banking
sector, the Japanese stock market recovered as early as in 1932. Capitalization of the Tokyo
Stock Exchange reached more than 120 percent of the nation’s gross national product, a record
high.3
The full-fledged invasion of China in 1937 totally changed Japan’s regulatory framework.
The Cabinet Planning Agency, a version of planning agency of the Soviet Union, was put
into place. The National General Mobilization Act, Act No. 55 of 1938, copied from an established Nazi equivalent, gave the state the authority to mobilize all necessary physical andhuman assets for war effort. By this act, property rights were severely curtailed and the stockand bond markets ceased to work, and, consequently, a heavily regulated banking sector took
the central role in corporate financing. While the government intended to follow the command
economy of the Soviet Union, the manufacturing sector remained private. The administration
imposed an artificially low savings account interest rate for all banks. Banks that collectedsavings at this nationally regulated interest rate channelized them to the manufacturing industries designated strategically important by the planning agency. Since direct financing was
suppressed, the manufacturing sector had no other choice but to follow the orders of the government that controlled the banking sector. Furthermore, a specific bank was assigned to eachfirm as primary channel. The allocation of savings to each bank was coordinated by the Financial Control Association composed of all banks and led by the Industrial Bank of Japan.
Thus, war effort strengthened the system of relational banking between major banks and the
manufacturing companies.4
This system continued as an important part of the Japanese economy even after the war
ended. Indirect financing became the most effective finance system in the growth decades of
the 1950s and 1960s, as it attracted public money and supplied funds to the nation’s capitalstarved sectors. This process was accompanied by strict state regulation of the capital market.
Bond issuance was restricted and bank deposit interest rates were still regulated and kept low.
The legacy of this heavy regulation and protection was not negligible. Data from even the
1970s indicate significant herd behavior of Japanese bank lending (Uchida and Nakagawa(2007)). Regulated herd behavior, rather than arbitrage, became the business norm of the3
4

See Hoshi and Kashyap (2001), p.39.
See Okazaki (1999).

3

Japanese banking sector under heavy regulation after 1938.
However, the expansion of government debt from the 1970s affected this regulated capital
market, because the government itself wanted resumption of the bond market and absorptionof its own sovereign bonds. Thus, the government began deregulation by the end of the 1970s,
and restrictions on corporate bond issuance were slowly relaxed and international capital flows
liberalized in the 1980s.5 The deregulation of Japan’s bond issuance allowed major corporations to change their financial strategy from bank borrowing to bond issuance, thus severely
affecting the banking sector. Banking regulations were also loosened in the early 1980s, forcing banks to find new saving outlets, such as financing investment in assets, which finally led
to the asset price bubble in the late 1980s. The burst of this bubble in the early 1990s createda large pile of non-performing loans. It was in this context that the Financial Supervisory
Agency was born in 1998.
The first section of this paper briefly gives the history of the Financial Supervisory Agency
and Financial Services Agency, FSA, showing that the Program for Financial Revival helped
reduce the non-performing loans of major banks between 2002 and 2005. In section 2, we review how the non-performing loans of Japanese banks evolved and how domestic corporations
shifted to issuance of offshore securities. In section 3, we attempt a quantitative analysis of
the Japanese banking sector’s activities in 1997–2011 based on the panel dataset we originallycreated. We first show benchmark results following Louzis, Vouldis and Metaxas (2012), andthen investigate factors that affected growth in non-performing loans in the sample period.
Losing lending to the non-financial corporate sector to the bond market, there were two possible destinations of huge savings with the banking sector; purchasing the Japanese Government
Bonds or increasing housing mortgage loans. Our results show that the former did not helpbanks reduce non-performing loans while the latter helped. In the final section, we discuss theestimation results in a broader context, such as shift of corporate financing, and suggest somepolicy implications based on our analysis. A natural focus based on our results in section 3
is whether the Japanese regulatory authority should have encouraged expansion of mortgage
loans or not. To discuss this point, Tajik, Aliakbari, Ghalia and Kaffash (2015) gives us a reasonable focal point. Time-series estimatios by our dataset warns that a further deregulation of
the Japanese housing loan market could have resulted in another bubble of the housing market,
collapse, and another pile of non-performing loans.

1Fifteen years of the Financial Services Agency: a descriptive retrospect

1.1

The transformation of regulations, 1998–2000

As concise accounts of Japan’s financial deregulations in the 1990s have been given by Hoshi
and Kashyap (2001), we now discuss only the regulatory transitions that occurred from the
1990s to the 2000s. In 1998, the Financial Supervisory Agency, which later became the Financial Services Agency in 2000, was formed under the Prime Minister’s Office, which was5

See Hoshi and Kashyap (2001), pp. 219–220, 229.

4

later expanded to the Cabinet Office.6
The establishment of a supervisory and inspectorial agency independent from the Ministryof Finance was an essential outcome of two reforms designed by the Hashimoto administration, the regulatory reform for financial markets, and administrative reform of the central
government, both planned to be completed in 2001.
The regulatory reform of the financial markets, dubbed “Japan’s Big Bang,” aimed at atransparent financial market, where entry is free and securities issuance play a greater rolein corporate financing. The deregulation on market entry is to be accompanied by stringent
post-entry implementation of transparent rules.
Initially, the FSA’s primary role was inspection and supervision of financial institutions
operating in Japan—banks, securities corporations, and insurance corporations—inherited
largely from the Ministry of Finance and partly from the Bank of Japan.7 After the FSA
was formed, a related superior organization, the Financial Reconstruction Commission, wasfounded in December 1998. This commission was practically meant to prevent a possible systemic crisis from the large number of non-performing loans left after the bubble burst throughprompt corrective action such as ensuring soundness of the inspected institutions’ financial
positions and, if considered necessary, capital injection into institutions.8
One of the tasks assigned to the FSA in 1998 was inspection of major banks, 18 at thattime. In early 1999, the major banks and the Financial Reconstruction Commission planned
for a capital injection into banks, whereby the banks had to submit a plan for improving theirbusiness performance to the Commission.9
Two related acts came into force in October 1998. One was the Act on Emergency Measures for Revitalizing the Financial Functions, Act No. 132 of 1998, or the 1998 Financial
Reconstruction Act, defining the procedures of handling poor-performing financial institutions including liquidation and containing the potentially destructive spillover effects on thefinancial system, such as how financial authorities should manage bankrupt institutions, how
to establish bridge banks for clearing and follow-up financing, and how to temporarily nationalize failed banks. The other one was the Act on Emergency Measures for Early Strengtheningof Financial Functions, Act 143 of 1998, or the 1998 Early Strengthening Act, aiming to solve
the non-performing loan problem. Based on this act, the Resolution and Collection Corporation was established, designed to purchase the stocks of failed banks and to help in theirreconstruction. As soon as these two acts came into force, two of Japan’s long-term credit
banks, partially state-owned and the vehicles of industrial policies, were temporarily nationalized and liquidated in 1998 under the scheme.10
In 1999, 18 banks, including some major banks, requested for injection of public funds andthis was accepted by the Financial Reconstruction Commission. These banks had to submit“follow-up” documents describing how they would reconstruct their business pursuant to thescheme of the 1998 Financial Reconstruction Act. The Financial Inspections Manual, giving
6

See Financial Supervisory Agency (2000), p. 1.
A consolidated regulatory agency to take over supervision from the central bank was proposed in the United
Kingdom from 1997 as well as in other countries. See Ferran (2011).
8
See www.fsa.go.jp/frc/newse/ne001.html: last accessed on February 24, 20149
See Financial Supervisory Agency (1999), pp. 63–66, 131–135.
10
See Financial Supervisory Agency (1999), pp. 70–74.
7

5

the measure that the FSA inspectors must take, was also publicly announced.
In July 2000, the Financial Supervisory Agency merged with the Financial Planning Bureau of the Ministry of Finance, to become the Financial Services Agency. The FSA operated
under the Financial Reconstruction Commission until the beginning of 2001, when the administrative reform was completed and the FSA came directly under the Cabinet Office.11
The policy packages issued by the administration in 2001 showed that the piled up nonperforming loans continued to be their biggest concern, and the FSA was supposed to take up
its responsibility. Under the reform-oriented administration of Junichiro Koizumi, the FSA
was to take up the “integrated resolution of the problems of the non-performing loans ofbanks and excessive debt of corporations” through “drastic removal of non-performing loans
from the banks’ balance sheets,”12 prompting the removal of non-performing loans from balance sheets through write-offs through debt forgiveness, bankruptcies or debt liquidation.13 In
practice, “the major banks” were supposed to “take measures to remove the non-performing
loans already classified as ‘in danger of bankruptcy’ and below from the banks’ balance sheets
within the next two fiscal years. They will also take measures to remove non-performing loans
newly classified as such within the next three fiscal years.”14

1.2

Structural reform and program for non-performing loan reduction

In 2001, the Cabinet Office released the first annual basic policies for economic and fiscal management and structural reform. The 2001 version declared that the problem of non-performing
loans must be solved “within two or three years.”15 The basic policy was elaborated into detailed procedures in October 2001, which stated that the financial institutions’ loan evaluation
and allowances were to keep up with the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the financial market: this implied that the FSA was going to carry out special inspections of major Japanesebanks.16 In addition to the 2001 basic policies, the administration published its “structuralreform and medium-term economic and fiscal perspectives” in January 2002. According to
the plan for fiscal years 2002 to 2006, which described the first two years 2002 and 2003 as an“intensive adjustment period,” the non-performing loan problem had to be drastically solved
through “strong and comprehensive measures.”17
The FSA published its “measures for developing a stronger financial system” in April
2002, but by then the FSA had already started its special inspection of major banks. While
11

The Financial Reconstruction Commission folded in 2001. See Financial Services Agency (2001), pp. 1,

213
12

See www5.cao.go.jp/keizai1/2001/0406taisaku-e.html: last accessed on February 24, 2014.
This process is called, in Japanese, “off-balance-sheet treatment” (or literally, “measures that ‘lead to’ theoff-balance-sheet”), because non-performing loans are “removed” from the balance sheets of institutions. In
a sense, this is an enhanced usage of the idiom “off-balance-sheet exchange”—usually used in the context ofstrategic asset management. The administration’s English documents usually avoid this misleading expression
and instead use words such as “removal from the balance sheets.”
14
Financial Services Agency (2001), p. 321.
15
See Financial Services Agency (2002), p. 75.
16
See www.fsa.go.jp/news/newsj/13/kinyu/f-20011026-3.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014 and Financial Services Agency (2002), p. 77.
17
See www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/policy/2002/0118tenbou e.html: last accessed on February 24, 201413

6

the results were published, the financial institutions were “further requested to take specificmeasures to dispose, in principle, one half of such loans within a year and a major part (approximately 80 percent) of them within two years as concrete targets.” Furthermore, it wasalso explicitly mentioned that the FSA was to particularly consider the importance of relational banking in the local economies sustained by the regional banks when prompting theregional banks to reduce their non-performing loans. The intensity of policy implementation
was intended to be more modest for the regional banks.
In 2001, 56 financial institutions went bankrupt.18 While most of them were small regional
institutions, the series of bankruptcies convinced the administration to move more urgently.
Meanwhile, major banks began to merge as part of consolidation of the entire sector. About adozen major banks operated by the end of the last century, but they consolidated into three. The
Mizuho Bank consisted of Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and the Industrial Bank of Japan;
the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation consisted of Sakura Bank and Sumitomo Bank,
later to become Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; the UFJ Bank consisted of Sanwa Bank,
Tokai Bank, and Toyo Trust and Banking; and Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group consisted of
the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Trust and Banking, Nippon Trust Bank and Tokyo
Trust Bank.19 The UFJ and the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group later merged into the Bankof Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
In October 2002, the FSA announced its “program for financial revival,20 stating that (a)The FSA would set up a task force on financial issues and take the initiative to resolve theproblem of non-performing loans with appropriate measures, the last resort being financing
from the Bank of Japan; (b) the FSA would also require financial institutions facing serious
problems to undergo “managerial reform,” and its task force will “strictly check [their] business plan”; (c) they would establish a new public funding scheme; and (d) the loan problemsof small- and medium-sized enterprises would be dealt with through special measures. Thee
Act on Special Measures for Strengthening Financial Functions, Act No. 128 of 2004, defined a new scheme for the inspection of public capital to financial institutions: this was toinduce them to conduct business more efficiently and support regional banks to maintain relational banking in local economies. Under this scheme, financial institutions could obtaincapital injection through the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan, which would purchaseshares from banks if the business reconstruction plan they submitted to the FSA was considered feasible. In the business reconstruction plan, banks were required to describe theirbusiness efficiency improvement commitment, how they intended to achieve it, and how theywould contribute to revamp the local economy.21 Thus, while the numerical target of reducing non-performing loans was planned to be strictly applied for the major banks, the regionalbanks were differently handled to avoid thje possible destruction of relational banking in local
economies.
In November 2002, the FSA released a work schedule with more details and deadlines, and18

See www.fsa.go.jp/frtc/kenkyu/event/20080404-1/05e.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014.
Financial Services Agency (2001), p. 109.
20
See www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20021030.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014; www.fsa.go.jp/
kouhou/kouhou 03/026 1410 1.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014; and www.fsa.go.jp/gaiyou/gaiyouj/
daijin004/20021101-1.html: last accessed on February 24, 2014.
21
See Financial Services Agency (2004), pp. 24, 268.
197

by the end of 2002 issued its supervision guidelines. Thereafter, the FSA periodically reported
the achievements of the program for financial revival until the end of fiscal year 2004, when
the program was planned to be completed.
The non-performing loan ratio based on the 1998 Financial Reconstruction Act classification of major banks evolved as follows: 8.4 percent (March 2002), 8.1 percent (September
2002), 7.2 percent (March 2003), 6.5 percent (September 2003), 5.2 percent (March 2004),
4.7 percent (September 2004), and 2.9 percent (March 2005).22 The FSA and the major banks
achieved the target of reducing the major banks’ non-performing loan ratio by about half, indicating that they rapidly and successfully improved their asset structure in less than three years.
The “Structural reform and medium-term economic and fiscal perspectives: Fiscal Year 2004
revised version,” a document issued at the end of January 2005, stated as follows: “With regard to structural reform, there has been a steady progress toward normalizing the problem of
non-performing loans as exemplified by the steady decline in the major banks’ non-performing
loans ratio in accordance with the target of halving the ratio as set by the program for financial
revival.23
Following the achievement the goal of reducing non-performing loans as planned in its
2002 program by 2005, the FSA changed its priority from emergency response to refinementof regulation measures.24
The 2008–2009 financial crisis was a major event for the FSA. The immense shock of thecrisis to capital markets severely affected the macroeconomic situation, which was alreadyaffected by a slight increase in the non-performing loan ratio of banks in 2009. However, thelevel of non-performing loans never exceeded that of, for example, 2006,25 suggesting that the
FSA’s regulatory reforms in the early 2000s provided banks with business discipline during thedrastic changes in the world economy following by the financial crisis of the late 2000s. It was,nevertheless, reasonable to assume that some financial institutions should have difficulty insupplying capital to local industries and might require public financial support. In December
2008, the administration therefore decided to extend the Act on act Special Measures forStrengthening Financial Functions, which was planned to expire in 2008, revising it to enable
more banks to use the scheme. The administration also prepared a supplementary budget
to implement the program. Several financial institutions applied for this extended injection
scheme.26
In this section, we first review the evolution of non-performing loans, where different
categories of banks took different steps to reduce non-performing loans.27[INSERT Figure 1 and Figure 2 HERE]
22

See Financial Services Agency (2005), p. 431 and Figure 1 below.
See Financial Services Agency (2005), pp. 4-5, 83; www5.cao.go.jp/keizai2/2005/0121reform andperspectives.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014; and www.fsa.go.jp/newse/e2004/20041224.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 201424
See www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20041224.pdf: last accessed on February, 2004.
25
See Financial Services Agency (2012), p. 667.
26
See Financial Services Agency (2009), pp. 77, 112, 381, 600.
27
See www.fsa.go.jp/en/regulated/npl/ for annualized summary information on non-performing loans: lastaccessed on February 24, 2014.
23

8

The transition in non-performing loans measured by the 1998 Financial Reconstruction
Act classification is shown in Figures 1 and 2. The non-performing loans ratio in all bankcategories increased in 2001 and early 2002, and then fell dramatically from mid-2002 to
2005; since then, it has been lower than the level at the end of the 1990s, except for in March
2009, following the late-2008 financial crisis shock to the Japanese economy. The increase in
non-performing loans at the beginning of the 2000s reflects the (1) worsening macroeconomic
condition and (2) stricter self-assessment pursuant to FSA inspection.28 The sharp increase in
non-performing loan ratio of long-term credit banks in September 2002 could be due to calculation technicality when counting non-performing loans of Mizuho Bank, newly created whenthe Industrial Bank of Japan, a long-term credit bank, merged with two city banks in April
2002. The downward slope corresponds to the program for financial revival. The regionalbanks reduced their non-performing loans in this period as well, although more slowly thanthe major banks did.
In the early 2000s, the banking sector as a whole was shrinking (See Figure 3), representing
the nation’s total credit excluding government bond purchases and non-performing loans. The
reduction in non-performing loans was barely catching up with this trend. Then, the businesscycle hit a trough, and thereafter Japanese economy enjoyed a modest but long upturn until
2007. However, the situation of major banks and regional banks were strikingly different.
Figure 4 gives the same results as in Figure 3, but only for major banks, and Figure 5 deals
with regional banks only.
[INSERT Figure 3, Figure 4, and Figure 5 HERE]
During the long expansion of the economy, regional banks increased their total credit, except for the purchase of government bonds as in Figure 5, indicating that relational banking
networks were still in demand during the same period, as shown by Uchida et al. (2008).
Meanwhile, the major banks’ total credit rapidly decreased, except for the purchase of government bonds, and has not recovered since then as shown in Figure 4. The reason for thisshrinkage includes the short-term effect of regulatory reforms, which were asymmetricallystringent on major banks, resulting in an asymmetric reduction in major bank lending (Imaiand Takarabe (2011)). However, this short-term effect cannot explain any long-term tendency.
The corporate sector in Japan’s expanding economy in the 2000s did not rely on the majorbanks to finance their businesses, thus forcing the major banks to purchase government bonds
as seen in Figure 6.
[INSERT Figure 6 HERE]

1.3

Transformation of corporate financing

The backdrop of the shrinking activities of major banks was the changes in corporate financing during the two decades. Anderson and Makhija (1999) and Hoshi and Kashyap (2001)
showed that bank lending was largely replaced by bond issuance, particularly off-shore, from
28

Such was also the Cabinet Office’s interpretation. See footnote 6 of www5.cao.go.jp/j-j/wp/wp-je01/
wp-je01-00201.html.

9the 1980s to the 1990s. This tendency never ceased, even after the 2000s. Although hit by the
global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, the corporate sector increased its off-shore stock andbond issuance as seen in Figure 7. In fact, making corporate financing dominated by direct
financing and open to international markets was exactly the goal of the reforms pursued by the
Hashimoto and Koizumi administrations. The corporate sector did not fail to take advantageof the reforms and to structurally transform itself. Following deregulation, businesses haveleft the banking sector that had been heavily regulated and protected by the state as a policy
instrument since 1938—when the National Total Mobilization Act was enacted following theinvasion of China and the preparations to attack the United States—until the deregulation of
the 1990s.
[INSERT Figure 7 HERE]

2

Data, estimation strategy, and benchmark results

2.1

Data

We next examine the evolution and possible determinants of the evolution of non-performing
loans (NPL) observed on the balance sheets of Japanese banks, such as return on equity(ROE), loan–deposit ratio (LON/DPS) and mortgage–loan ratio (MRG/LON), with controlling for the regionally and cyclically varied macroeconomic conditions, such as gross prefectural productand regional land prices, which potentially affect banking performance.
We created a panel dataset consisting of bank-specific variables, macroeconomic indices,and semi-macroeconomic indices spanning fiscal years 1997 to 2011, denoted by t. Most of
the bank-specific annual series are taken from the dataset of Japanese Bankers Association(each year), adding a few other annual series from that of Japan Financial News (each year).
The dataset of Japanese Bankers Association (each year) consists of the balance sheet dataof city banks, (former) long-term credit banks, trust banks, regional banks I, regional banks
II, and other banks.29 For the cross-section ID number i, we used the Financial Institution
Common Code defined by the Japan Bankers Association. In this ID system, when a merger
or acquisition takes place, the new bank retains the number used by the surviving bank.30 We
thus assume that banks do not change their individual patterns of behavior after a merger or
acquisition.
We now describe the bank classifications as mentioned above. City banks are major banks
providing nation-wide services, although they have different patterns of regional branch networks. Long-term credit banks functioned under the direction of the government and issued
bonds to supply long-term loans to various industries from the 1950s to the 1970s, but theyceased in the late 1990s. While regional banks I are members of the Regional Banks Association of Japan, regional banks II belong to the Second Association of Regional Banks.31
29

The other banks included in our panel data are Citibank Japan, Norinchukin Bank, and Seven Bank.
Mizuho Bank, for example, inherited the Common Code 0001 from Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank.
31
Some of the former banks have their origins in the 1870s and were among Japan’s first modern banks, whilesome of the latter have their origins in ROSCA-style local financial meetings. Most of the latter banks are usuallysmaller than the former ones, but not always.
30

10As of April 2013, there are 5 city banks, 16 trust banks, 2 former long-term credit banks, 64
regional banks I, and 41 regional banks II.32 For the macroeconomic indices to controll forregional and cyclical effects, we insert the gross prefectural product (GPP) reported by the
Cabinet Office (each year), and residential land prices (LP)cited from the announcement of
the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Land Economy and Construction and Engineering Industry Bureau, (each year). The panel data include 1996 bank-year
observations.33
We use the definition of “non-performing loans,” following the 1998 Financial Reconstruction Act. Loans are classified into four categories under this system: (1) bankrupt orde facto bankrupt loans, (2) doubtful loans, (3) loans requiring special attention, and (4) normal loans. Bankrupt or de facto bankrupt loans are loams of “debtors who are legally andformally bankrupt, i.e., in the process of liquidation, reorganization, and rehabilitation, or virtually bankrupt with no prospects of resuscitation.” Doubtful loans are loans of “debtors who
have not gone bankrupt but are in financial difficulties, and thus whose lenders are unlikely
to receive the principal and interest concerned on due dates.” Loans requiring special attention are loans “whose interest and/or principal payments are in arrears by 3 months or more,
and restructured assets with changes in terms and conditions.” Normal loans are “all loans
to debtors who have no particular problems with their financial conditions” and that are notclassifiable under the first three non-performing loans.34
Besides the above classification, Japan has two other asset categorization systems in Japan,
one is used for the risk management of loans, and the other for the banks’ self-assessment ofassets. The former is almost the same as the 1998 Financial Reconstruction Act classification
but is based on a different law. Banks use the latter for the purpose of write-offs or provisions.35

2.2

Estimation strategy

Louzis et al. (2012) discussed the possible determinants of non-performing loans as issued
by Greece’s 9 largest banks in the 2000s, largely categorizing the determinants into two, themacroeconomic conditions and bank-specific elements. Louzis et al. (2012) used both categories of variables as regressors and estimated their impacts on changes in the non-performing
loan ratio.36 Louzis et al. (2012) suggested several arguments on the coefficient signs of esti32

Data on only four of the trust banks are used in the calculation of Figures 1 and 2.
Land price series of residential district is LP1 in the dataset for on-line publication. See legend in thedataset file.
34
See www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20030207-1/r02.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014. In our dataset
for on-line publication, individual series of all four categories of non-performing loans are included. We use
series of summing up all four items as the series of non-performing loans, NPL. See legend of the dataset file.
35
Depending on authors, different English words may be used to refer to the same non-performing loanclassifications. One official translation (although provisional) can be found at: www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/
e20030207-1/r01.pdf: last accessed on February 24, 2014; www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20030207-1/r02.pdf:
last accessed on February 24, 2014; www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20030207-1/r03.pdf: last accessed on February
24, 2014; and www.fsa.go.jp/news/newse/e20030207-1/r04.pdf.
36
They also estimated the different types of non-performing loans, that is, consumer loans, mortgage loans,and business loans. Such detailed information is not available for Japanese banks, and so we had to use the data33

11

mation models. According to them, we can reasonably assume that GDP growth has a negative
impact on the non-performing loan ratio, because “excessive” lending in boom periods, evento low-quality debtors, tends to prove to be excessive and result in increase of non-performing
loans after a recession. Meanwhile, ROEs may affect the non-performing loans negatively,
since ROE, as an index of past performance, may be negatively associated with increases infuture non-performing loans. Their view suggests baseline controls.
Our dependent variable is the non-performing loan ratio, NPLi,t of bank i at the end of
fiscal year t, as a percentage, based on the definition of “non-performing loan” as per the 1998
Financial Restoration Act classification.37 By dividing this sum by the total loan amount,
we obtain our dependent variable. For estimation, we use the first difference of the nonperforming loan ratio (∆NPLi,t ) because we cannot reject the hypothesis of the level series
having individual unit roots.38
We control for two series of semi-macroeconomic determinants as proxies of cyclicaland regional effects: gross prefectural product, GPPi,j,t , and land prices in residential areas,LPi,j,t , if the central branch of bank i is located at prefecture j in year t. These are assumed to
be proxies of regional economic conditions cyclically changing. For bank-specific variables,
besides the lagged values of the dependent variable, we also control for the ROE of the banks,
ROEi,t , which is assumed to indicate bank performance and thus affect NPLi,t negatively, as
high performance leads to a rapid reduction of non-performing loans.
As we have seen, the progress of non-performing loan reduction in Japan is seen to movewith the overall decrease in lending to the non-financial business sectors. If the banks did not
reduce their own business volumes overall, theyhad in practice two possibilities of channelizing this country’s vast savings; financing the government through purchasing the Japanese
government bonds (JGB), or investing in the housing market through housing mortgage lending. This shift in banking size and portfolios can be decomposed into the loan–deposit ratio(LONi,t /DPSi,t ), Japanese government bond holding–deposit ratio (JGBi,t /DPSi,t ), and themortgage–loan ratio (MRGi,t /LONi,t ), where LONi,t denotes the total loan, DPSi,t total deposit, JGBi,t total Japanese government bond holding, and MRGi,t total housing mortgage ofbank i in year t.
The other possible determinants are as follows. (a) Management inefficiency, INEFi,t ,is defined as the ratio of operating costs over operating income; its increase may raise thenon-performing loan ratio. (b) Equity ratio, EQRi,t , is the ratio of owned capital over total
assets, that is., the overall size of the balance sheet. Louzis et al. (2012) suggested that adecrease in equity ratio may lead to the moral hazard problem of bank managers, because
thinly capitalized banks tend to make more-than-optimal risky investment to maximize manof non-performing loans for all types of debtors.
37
We sum up the loans categorized as “bankrupt or de facto bankrupt (“bankrupt or quasi-bankrupt” in theother translation), “doubtful,” and “requiring special attention” (or “needs attention” or “substandard”), of which“bankrupt or de facto bankrupt” is the most risky category.
38
The results of the unit root test (individual intercept) are as follows. For NPLi,t , the augmented Dickey–
Fuller Fisher χ2 statistic is 348.105 with p = 0.0035, and the Phillips–Perron Fisher χ2 statistic is 289.308
with p = 0.3383 (the optimal lag length based on Schwarz Information Criteria is 0 to 2). For ∆NPLi,t , theaugmented Dickey–Fuller Fisher χ2 statistic is 801.567 and the Phillips–Perron Fisher χ2 statistic is 863.036,
both with p = 0.0000 (the optimal lag length based on Schwarz Information Criteria is 0 to 1).

12agers salaries that are lower bounded, as originally suggested by Jensen and Meckling (1978),thus increasing non-performing loans. In addition, we introduce dummy variables for time or
cross-section fixed effects. We thus define the basic form of our model as follows:∆NPLi,t = α0 + α1 ∆NPLi,t−1 + α2 ∆ROEi,t + α3 ∆ROEi,t−1+ α4 GPPi,j,t + α5 LPi,j,t + β∆xi,t
(1)

+

T
X

γ1,τ FIXt,τ +

τ =1

N
X

γ2,i FIXi + εi,t ,

i=1

i =1, . . . , N ; j = 1, · · · , 47; t = 1, . . . , T,
where xi,t denotes the bank-specific variable vector whose elements are (LON/DPS)i,t , (JGB/DPS)i,t ,(MRG/LON)i,t , INEFi,t , and EQRi,t ; FIXt,τ (t = 1, . . . , T ) stands for the time fixed-effectdummy variables equal to 1 if t = τ and 0 otherwise; and FIXi (i = 1, . . . , N ) are the crosssection fixed-effect dummy variables.

2.3

Benchmark results

As a benchmark, specifications 1–1 and 1–2 in Table 1 regress the growth in non-performing
loans (∆NPLi,t ) to its own first-order lag, the growth in ROE (∆ROEi,t ), and the first-orderlag in the growth in ROE. To control for regional and cyclical shocks, the gross prefectural
product (GPPi,j,t ) and land prices (LPi,j,t ) of prefecture j where the central branch of banki is located in year t are inserted as regressors. With period-fixed effect, specification 1–1
shows that variances in profitability affected the reduction in non-performing loans. With
fixed cross-sectional effect, specification 1–2 shows that this tendency robust.39
Cyclical effects might be captured by stock price indices as well as the gross prefectural
product. Specification 1-3 includes the average stock price indices of all companies listedon the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December each year as a regressor (TPXt ).40 Specification
1-3 also includes the yield spread of Japanese government bonds over the US treasury bonds,
which was then called “Japan premium” (JPNt ). Note that in the early 2000s, Japanese banks
were recognized as riskier destinations, rather than safer ones. Then we see that the gross39

We compared the fixed effect and Wu–Hausman random effect estimates in specification 1–2. In the former,
the cross-sectional F statistic is 1.7405, with degrees of freedom 143, 1208 and p = 0.0000, indicating that we
can reject the hypothesis that the fixed effect specification is inappropriate. The latter, on the other hand, yields
a cross-sectional random χ2 statistic of 131.185521, with degrees of freedom of 5 and p = 0.0000, implyingthat we can reject the hypothesis that the random effect is appropriate. These results justify our cross-section
fixed-effect specifications. We tried other definitions of the cross-section identification number i to test the effectof bank mergers and acquisitions. In Tables 1 and 2, banks established through mergers or acquisitions retain
the number used by the surviving banks. In our trial definitions, we assigned new IDs to the banks created after
mergers and acquisitions. We created two trial versions, one reflecting only major mergers, and the other giving
information on minor mergers. We tested the same estimation specifications with these two ID systems. Neither
version yielded significant results, suggesting that banks may not have changed their individual business policies
after mergers.
40
The series are calculated by the Tokyo Stock Exchange and called TOPIX, available at http://www.tse.or.
jp/market/topix/data/index.html: last accessed on March 24, 2014.

13

prefectural product (GPPi,j,t ) is insignificant, indicating that the gross prefectural product(GPPi,j,t ) and the stock prices (TPXt ) are cyclically correlated.
Hereafter, we use the gross prefectural product (GPPi,j,t ) to control for business cycles
instead of stock prices, because the former can control for regional differences in businesscycles. A positive coefficient of “Japan premium” (JPNt ) indicates that an increase in international borrowing costs might have increased non-performing loans. However, because thecausality between number of non-performing loans and “Japan premium” is not obvious, we
do not consider this variable in the following estimations.
[INSERT Table 1 HERE]
Fixed effect specifications 1–4, 1–5, and 1–6 in Table 1 include the banks’ equity ratio
over total asset (EQRi,t ) and the operating costs ratio over revenue (INEFi,t ), which captures
degree of management inefficiency. As asserted in Louzis et al. (2012), the equity ratio issometimes linked to the “moral hazard hypothesis,” which predicts that the lower the equity
ratio, the weaker is the shareholders’ monitoring of managements, resulting in a more-thanoptimal leverage and, eventually, larger non-performing loans.
However, this link may not be relevant for the major commercial banks operating under thestrict requirement of certain equity ratios by national agencies following the Bank of International Settlement. Higher equity ratios were often the target of monitoring agencies trying toprevent insolvencies. Moreover, Japan’s major banks were strictly required to meet the equity
ratio targets set by the FSA. If these could not be met, state capital injection, and hence directintervention by the authority, including replacement of the current management, was always
an option. Thus, EQRi,t should be taken as a measure of banks’ ability to meet the higher
equity ratios required by the FSA, instead of the likelihood of the principal agent problem
between shareholders and bank managers. Meanwhile, the running cost ratio over revenue(INEFi,t ) can be interpreted as a proxy for degree of management inefficiency. Since we ran
fixed effect estimations, the degree of management inefficiency (INEFi,t ) is expected to capture the additionally increased inefficiency of the sample banks during the sample period, with
time-invariant efficiency through the period being controlled for by fixed effect.
While an increase in bank equity ratio (EQRi,t ) significantly decreases the non-performing
loan ratio in specifications 1–3 and 1–5, the degree of management inefficiency (INEFi,t )does not have any significant impact when controlling for equity ratio (EQRi,t ). The banks’defensive efforts to cut their operating costs did not significantly reduce the level of nonperforming loans. The issue was thus much larger than what improvement in daily routine
could manage.

3

Alternative source of cyclical reduction

3.1

Mortgage loans matter

The benchmark results show that profit effectively reduced non-performing loans. Next,
we decompose source of profit. Table 2 breaks down the growth of non-performing loans(∆NPLi,t ) into several factors using cross-section fixed-effect specifications.
14[INSERT Table 2 HERE]
Specification 2–1 shows that the growth in ratio of loans over deposits (∆(LONi,t /DPSi,t ))increased the level of non-performing loans. From recent research, Japan’s post-deregulationbanking sector shows that depositors have disciplined the banks such that higher deposits imply stronger discipline, although this is not necessarily accompanied by higher profits (Uchida
and Satake (2009)). Meanwhile, as established non-financial corporations have relied moreon the bond market instead of the banking sector, an increase in loan-deposit ratio did notdecrease, but increased, the level of non-performing loans.
Specifications 2–2 and 2–3 show that the ratio of mortgage loans over total loans (∆(MRGi,t /LONi,t ))had a negative impact; that is, it reduced non-performing loans. As a robustness check, weinserted the equity ratio (EQRi,t ) and degree of management inefficiency (INEFi,t ) into specifications 2–4 and 2–5. The ratio of mortgage loans over total loans (∆(MRGi,t /LONi,t ))still shows negative coefficients when controlling for equity ratio EQRi,t , and the degree ofmanagement inefficiency INEFi,t does not show a significant impact when controlling forother factors. In short, the requirement of higher equity ratio might reduce non-performing
loans, but the impact is dominated by the effect of increased mortgage loans. Furthermore,
operational efficiency is not relevant to reduction in accumulated non-performing loans.
From Table 2, we know that a further extension of mortgage loans might have further
reduced non-performing loans. Then, where was and is the frontier? Before the financial
deregulation introduced in the 1980s, mortgage loans to households were almost monopolized
by the Government Housing Loan Corporation, a state-owned institution. In that period, a custom was formed. In Japan, unlike in the United States, the income tax of employed workers
are withheld at the source by employers, and and employers make the income tax payments to
the National Tax Agency on behalf of their employees. Under this procedure, the employers
issue a certificate of income and deducted income tax through the previous year in January toevery employee. Thus, financial institutions can confirm an applicant’s employment income
just by checking the certificate of income and deducted income tax. The Government Housing Loan Corporation used the certificate of income and deducted income tax as the primary
screening device when lending against mortgages. This custom was taken up by banks after
they entered the mortgage loan markets. Even now, in the mid-2010s, a difference exists between employed applicants and self-employed applicants with regard to access to mortgage
loans.
Thus, if there is a frontier in the mortgage loan market, it is for self-employed applicants. Table 3 shows the ratio of employed workers over self-employed workers (EMPi,k,t )in region k where the central branch of bank i is located in year t and the interaction term
between the mortgage loan ratio and ratio of self-employed workers over employed workers(∆(MRGi,t /LONi,t ) × ∆(1/EMPi,k,t )) as regressors of the growth in non-performing loans(∆NPLi,t ); the ratio of employed workers over self-employed workers (EMPi,k,t ) is calculated
per region as a unit.41
41

The data are available from the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications,
http://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/longtime/03roudou.htm: last accessed on March 27, 2014. The 47 prefectures are bundled into 9 regions. The Hokkaido region includes the Hokkaido prefecture; the Tohoku region
includes the Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Miyagi, Yamagata, and Fukushima prefectures; the Minami Kanto region

15

[INSERT Table 3 HERE]
Not surprisingly, the employed worker ratio (EMPi,k,t ) shows a significantly positive impact on the growth in non-performing loans in all specifications from 3–1 to 3–6. The ratio
is higher in metropolitan regions where the major firms and government offices are located;note that the metropolitan regions were the most severely affected by the collapse of real estate markets. Now, we focus on the interaction term between the mortgage loan ratio andthe self-employed worker ratio (∆(MRGi,t /LONi,t ) × ∆(1/EMPi,k,t )), which has a negative
coefficient of a large absolute value in specifications from 3–3 to 3–6. Thus, if a bank could increase its mortgage loan in a region where self-employed people relatively increased, it could
contribute much to the reduction of non-performing loans. Roughly, an extension of mortgage
loans in rural markets was a frontier that led to non-performing loan reduction.

3.2

Robustness check

With regard to the results in Tables 2 and 3, we might not be able to exclude the possibilityof endogeneity when a bank determines its volume of mortgage loans. Specifications 4–1 and
4–2 in Table 4 show a robustness check for specifications 2–3 and 2–4 by panel generalized
method of moments. Specification 4–1 appears to indicate that the negative impact of anincrease in mortgage loan on non-performing loans might not be robust. However, once wecontrol for the ratio of employed/self-employed ratio (EMPi,k,t ), which captures the longlasting structure of each regional economy and hence whose error term seems to be hardly
correlated with the first difference of banks’ annual performance every year, as instrument
variables in specifications 4–3 and 4–4, the negative impact of mortgage loan on the volume
of non-performing loans is quite significant. Therefore, we may conclude that an increasein mortgage loan effectively reduced non-performing loans after controlling for the different
structures of regional economies.
[INSERT Table 4 HERE]

3.3

Cyclical effects on mortgage markets, housing markets, and nonperforming loans

Estimates in Table 3 sample period 2000 to 2011, which includes both expansionary phase
up to 2007 and contractionary phase from 2008 due to the financial crisis. In Table 5, we
separate the sample period before and after the financial crisis. Specifications 5–1 and 5–2
apply specification 3–5 in Table 3 to period 2000–2007 and to period 2008–2011, respectively.
includes the Chiba, Siatama, Tokyo, and Kanagawa prefectures; the Kita Kanto and Koshin region includes
the Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures; the Hokuriku region includes the Niigata,
Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui prefectures; the Tokai region includes Shizuoka, Aichi, Gifu and Mie prefectures;
the Kinki region includes Shiga, Kyoto, Wakayama, Osaka and Hyogo prefectures; the Chugoku and Shikoku
region includes Shimane, Tottori, Yamaguchi, Okayama, Hiroshima, Kagawa, Ehime, Tokushima and Kochi prefectures; and the Kyushu and Okinawa region includes the Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Oita, Kumamoto, Miyazaki,
Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures.

16

Specifications 5–3 and 5–4 apply specification 3–6 to period 2000–2007 and to 2008–2011,
respectively.
[INSERT Table 5 HERE]
Then we see that the reduction in non-performing loans driven by increase in mortgage
loans is observed only in the expansionary period up to 2007 as shown in specifications 5–1
and 5–3. This result reminds us a caveat. In general, the banking sector with state’s backdrop
tends to take risk more than optimal. This conventional wisdom is theoretically supported(Kato and Tsuruga (2016)). Further, in case of the United States, where the deregulated banking sector did funnel funds to the housing market from the late 1990s, a striking observation isreported. In the early stage until the mid-2000s, the rise in housing price was accompanied by
the reduction in non-performing loans, as we showed for the Japanese case. However, fromthe mid-2000s, the hike in the housing price was accompanied by piling non-performing loans(Tajik et al. (2015)).
Table 6 shows impact of increasing ratio of residential land price of the prefecture where
the central branch of sample bank is located on growth in non-performing loans of the bank,(2)∆NPLi,t = β0 +β1 ∆ log(LPi,j,t ) + β2 ∆ log(LPi,j,t−1 ) + β3 ∆ log(LPi,j,t−2 )+β4 ∆ log(LPi,j,t−3 ) + β5 ∆ log(LPi,j,t−4 ) + β6 ∆ log(LPi,j,t−5 ).

Since we do not control for potential impacts of other factors, these results are tentative. However, specification 6–2 cannot reject a possibility that a hike in real estate prices led to anincrease, not decrease, in non-performing loans, as documented by Tajik et al. (2015) for theUnited States. While expansion of mortgage loans contributed to reduction in non-performing
loans, overheat of the housing markets might have increased non-performing loans, we tentatively conclude. In reality, Japan did not have a credit boom up to 2007, as seen in Figure 4,
and hence the latter concern did not materialize.
[INSERT Table 6 HERE]

Discussion
The question of whether the growth in non-performing loans is primarily due to cyclical factors
or structural factors is always nontrivial. This question will decide whether financial regulatory
policies should contain structural elements or not. The ratio of non-performing loans over total
outstanding loans and the other stress-resilience indicators must be standardized, consistent,
and transparent, and must not be discretionary in any manner. However, the exact threshold of“unhealthiness” depends on the somehow discretionary decisions of asset treatment made by
the relevant authorities and its stringency inevitably depends on what factors the authorities
believe have caused the accumulation of non-performing loans, that is, whether the factors
are structural or cyclical.42 If cyclical factors seem dominant, considering the diseconomy of42

Here our discussion assumes that asset treatment by the authorities may be discretionary in one dimension
regarding the degree of risk. In practice, evaluation of asset treatment is often multidimensional, and hence
standardization of asset treatment between the authorities beyond national borders emerges as another criticalissue. See Bholat, Lastra, Markose, Miglionico and Sen (2016).

17

financial distress, the authorities need to be as cautious as possible and set the threshold ofthe
non-performing loan ratio higher; that is, they need to make it more relaxed. If structural
factors such as past vested rent or drastic changes in the economy’s driving-force industry
seem dominant, the sooner the authorities intervene the better, even if the banks that had madestructural mistakes have to be consolidated; that is, the authorities need to set the threshold of
non-performing loans lower, making it, more stringent.
The accumulation of Japan’s non-performing loans in the 1990s was more or less due
to structural factors. The Japanese bond market deregulation prompted the manufacturingsector, the source of country’s productivity growth, to move from indirect financing to direct
financing, that is, typically bond flotation in the international market. The deregulation of thebanking sector and enhanced competition eliminated the vested rents enjoyed by the banking
sector.
The question that arises is whether these structural downward pressures could have been
offset by structural upward pressures. Given its historical path, the Japanese banking sector
essentially had two choices. First, it could return to the corporate financing of small- andmedium-sized companies. The heavy regulations of wartime and postwar corporate financing
enabled major banks to retain the business of their major manufacturing firm clients, which
could have gone to the bond market. When they were released through bond market deregulation, the major banks could have found new business opportunities from firms that were
earlier classified as less prioritized. While the major banks’ total credit except for JGB purchases remained stagnant or even declined slightly over the last decade, the regional banks’credit gradually increased. Although financing smaller firms is indeed good business, theloan–deposit ratio of regional banks did not increase during in this period. Thus, the corporate
financing market for smaller firms became saturated, and the entry of major banks, which had
to pay higher salaries and had limited experience with smaller firms, was not be feasible.
Second, banks could find new business. If the banking sector could find another upward
structural momentum, it could compensate for the downward momentum. As shown in Table
2, mortgage loans reduce non-performing loans, whereas non-mortgage loans increase nonperforming loans. The redistribution of risky corporate financing to risky consumer financing,probably contributes to profits, but it does not imply the reduction of non-performing loans.
Meanwhile, consumer mortgage loans serve as a powerful tool to reduce non-performing
loans. In fact, the housing market was suggested as the last frontier after deregulation to“emulate” the British experience (Lomax (1994)). The estimation results shown in Tables 2
and 3 suggest that increases in personal housing mortgage loans could have helped to reduce
non-performing loans by improving the profitability of the banking sector.
Although it was intensified in Japan as a result of its own historical path, the structural reduction of indirect corporate financing is not unique to Japan. The development of informationand communication technologies has produced capital markets that are far more transparent
and resilient than those of the 1920s, that is, before the Great Depression. Deregulation after
the 1980s prompted the banking sector to find new profit sources as the non-financial corporate sector went back to the capital markets. The two greatest post-deregulation financial
crises in the United States in the early 1980s and mid-2000s had their roots in mortgage loans.
As long as they are carefully handled by the banking sector and the regulation authorities,
mortgage loans will likely continue to be a profitable business alternative in matured indus18

trial economies with well-established and transparent capital markets. Japan was and is not an
exception to this rule.
This does not mean that the mortgage loans can be a panacea for an excessively largebanking sector. As shown in results in Tables 3 and 4, increase in housing mortgage loans
were virtually the only one possibility to reduce non-performing loans in Japan’s case. At thesame time, the effect was observed only in the period up to 2007 as shown in Table 5, and in
the period, growth in land price actually led an increase in non-performing loans as shown in
Table 6. Occasions from 2000 to 200y are consistent with the view suggested by Tajik et al.
(2015).
In reality, from 2002 to 2004, the Japanese regulatory authority implemented the stringent
non-preforming loan reduction program for major banks. The implementation might be afactor that repressed credit growth in the 2000s observed particularly for major banks as shownin Figure 4. However, if the implementation made major banks less aggressive in lending,especially for housing mortgage, it likely contain another bubble and its burst, and hence was
highly likely a correct decision, provided the experience in the United States.
After all, the structural reduction in corporate financing by banks to the manufacturingsector could not have been compensated by a structural increase in financing to another channel. Moreover, the estimation results in Table 2 show that holding government bonds did
not help reduce non-performing loans. Thus, the 2002–2004 implementation of the structural
non-performing loan disposal of the major banks was bound to happen at sometime during thelast decade.
Massive bank consolidation was and may still be inevitable. If so, a lower threshold of
non-performing loan ratio in a stricter investigation and evaluation of non-performing loans isjustified even at the risk of structural reorganization of the banking sector. The strict measurestaken by the FSA in 2002 to 2004, forcing banks to write off their non-performing loans as
quickly as possible, was the best and wisest option.
The United States, Spain, and Ireland, whose financial markets had been structurally reformed, saw a rapid expansion of their deregulated mortgage loan markets, a boost in housing
prices, and improved banking sector profitability in the mid-2000s. However, the result wasanother pile of non-performing loans. Unless a novel and innovative way to regulate the mortgage loan market is found, stringent mortgage loan regulation is advisable. Our tentativeevaluation of the rapid 2002–2004 non-performing loan disposal is thus justified. Our view ismore pessimistic than that put forward by Hoshi (2011), who argues that a more properly tailored regulatory reform could have avoided the stagnation in the major banks. We admit that
our result is rather tentative and that further inquiry into the feasibility of such an optimistic
alternative, with rigorous linkage with the real economy, is required.
We summarize our lessons from the Japanese experience as follows. First, the predominance of corporate finance by a heavily regulated and protected banking sector, like during
the period of the Great Depression and the Second World War, inevitably would dissolve,
and corporate financing for listed companies would naturally become overwhelmed by direct financing. Second, relational banking for small- and medium-sized companies, many ofwhich are not listed and hence cannot access the bond market, is feasible even in a matured
economy. Third, stringent monitoring and guidance during the down-sizing of major banks
is appropriate, as was decisively implemented in Japan from 2002 and 2004, while the asym19

metrical treatment of regional banks providing relational banking to startups and small- andmedium-sized companies is reasonable.

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Anderson, Christopher W. and Anil K. Makhija, “Deregulation, disintermediation, andagency costs of debt: Evidence from Japan,” Journal of Financial Economics, Feb 1999,
51 (2), 309–339.
Bholat, David, Rosa Lastra, Sheri Markose, Andrea Miglionico, and Kallol Sen, “Nonperforming loans: Regulatory and accounting treatments of assets,” Apr 2016. Bank ofEngland, Staff Working Paper, No. 594.
Cabinet Office, “Kemmin Keizai Keisan (Annual Reports on Prefectural Accounts),” eachyear. url in Japanese: http://www.esri.cao.go.jp/jp/sna/data/data list/kenmin/files/files
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year2 02/index.html Last accessed: July 11, 2016. In English: http://www.zenginkyo.or.
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267.

21

Table 1 Trends of non-performing loan reduction.
12
13
14
15
16
11
Estimation method
panel least squares
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
pooled
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
fixed
pooledpooledpooledpooledpooledIndependent variables coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statisticcoefficient t statisticcoefficient t statisticcoefficient t statistic
***
***
***
***
***
***
CONSTANT-0.2310 -2.7382-2.4751 -3.3124-2.2754 -3.0590-1.8645 -2.8817-2.5810 -3.4505-2.0181 -3.1390**
ΔNPLi , t 1
-0.0529 -2.2743-0.1071 -4.2174 *** -0.1295 -5.1013 *** -0.0622 -2.8183 *** -0.1182 -4.6087 *** -0.0720 -3.2518 ***
***
***
***
ΔROEi , t
-0.0024 -2.8624-0.0032 -3.5310-0.0032 -3.4875 *** -0.0011 -1.4115-0.0031 -3.4394-0.0005 -0.6365
*
**
*
**
**
ΔROEi , t 1
-0.0013 -1.9380-0.0015 -2.2493-0.0015 -2.2224-0.0010 -1.6611-0.0014 -2.1179-0.0006 -1.0391******
GPPi , j , t
0.0000 -2.0316
0.0000 -2.1397
0.0000 -1.5828
0.0000 -2.1475
0.0000 -1.3906
0.0000 -1.3123
***
***
***
***
***
LPi , j , t
0.00001.03940.00007.70050.00004.28570.00006.90960.00006.58720.00005.9389ΔTPXt-0.0009 -4.5935 ***JPNt
0.23792.6693 *********ΔEQRi , t
-0.5862 -20.1895-0.6093 -20.0836**
ΔINEFi , t
0.02622.22980.01321.3006
144
144
144
144
144
144
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
1,357
1,357
1,357
1,357
1,357
1,357
included observations
2
0.12090.08990.11250.31910.04020.2924
adjusted R-2,808.4302-2,761.0478-2,742.9053-2,563.6317-2,558.4779-2,363.2866
Log likelihood
13.4309 ***1.9053 ***2.1455 ***5.2652 ***1.3638 ***4.5626 ***F statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

Table 2 Factors of non-performing loan reduction.
22
23
24
25
21
Estimation method
panel least squares
panel least squares
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
pooledpooledpooledpooledpooledIndependent variables coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statisticcoefficient t statistic
**
***
***
***
***
CONSTANT-1.3851 -1.9637-2.4421 -3.9042-2.2518 -3.6780-2.1487 -3.4376-1.9272-3.1719***
ΔNPLi , t 1
-0.0796 -3.3552-0.0161 -0.7225-0.0202 -0.9144-0.0192 -0.8663-0.0282-1.3042
***
***
***
***
***
ΔROEi , t
-0.0038 -4.4731-0.0034 -4.3311-0.0036 -4.5635-0.0036 -4.5999-0.0021-2.6713
***
***
***
***
**
ΔROEi , t 1
-0.0018 -2.8048-0.0016 -2.6956-0.0016 -2.7872-0.0016 -2.8396-0.0013-2.2804
***
**
**
***
**
GPPi , j , t
0.0000 -4.0771
0.0000 -2.0108
0.0000 -2.4769
0.0000 -2.6248
0.0000-2.4245
***
***
***
***
***
LPi , j , t
0.00008.84640.00008.44180.00008.71230.0000 8.7710
0.00007.9009***Δ(JGBi , t /DPSi , t )-1.3861 -0.8908-1.4305 -0.9258-1.4382-0.9585-4.1033 -4.1792
***
***
***
Δ(LONi , t /DPSi , t )4.46294.21514.4412 4.1914
4.0021
3.8844 ***10.9751 13.2431
**
**
**
**
Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )-3.2197 -2.1404-3.1779 -2.1113-2.9926-2.0471-3.2725 -2.1592***
ΔEQRi , t-0.4390-8.4850ΔINEFi , t
140
140
140
140
140
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
1,355
1,324
1,326
1,324
1,324
included observations
0.21280.11390.12560.12620.1760adjusted R2-2,658.4845-2,478.4664-2,472.5180-2,468.6501-2,429.2821
Log likelihood
2.3041 ***2.3000 ***2.9089 ***3.4395 ***2.1650 ***F statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

26
ΔNPLi , t
fixedpooledcoefficient t statistic***-2.0344-3.3757*-0.0377-1.7409**-0.0018-2.2036*-0.0010-1.8903*0.0000-1.6515***0.00006.8594-2.2710-1.49433.95383.5270 ****-2.4864-1.7518***-0.4319-6.3699
0.00770.7985140
11 (20002010)
1,247
0.0842-2,236.1762
1.7739 ***Table 3 Impact of mortgage loan with controlling for self-employed households.
33
34
35
31
32
Estimation method
panel least squares
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
pooledpooledpooledpooledpooledIndependent variables
coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic
***
***
***
***
-1.8897 -3.1386 ***CONSTANT-2.1784 -3.5311-1.9236 -3.1823-2.1316 -3.4717-1.8623 -3.0336-0.0269 -1.2403
ΔNPLi , t 1
-0.0224 -1.0191-0.0257 -1.1775-0.0242 -1.1043-0.0269 -1.2355
***
***
***
***
-0.0036 -4.7191 ***ΔROEi , t
-0.0034 -4.3517-0.0035 -4.5966-0.0035 -4.5039-0.0036 -4.7481
***
***
***
***
***
-0.0016 -2.8932
ΔROEi , t 1
-0.0015 -2.7143-0.0016 -2.8247-0.0016 -2.7973-0.0016 -2.9281
**
***
**
***
0.0000 -3.0502 ***GPPi , j , t
0.0000 -2.5469
0.0000 -3.1552
0.0000 -2.4573
0.0000 -3.0433
***
***
***
***
***
0.0000 8.2677
LPi , j , t
0.0000 8.0186
0.0000 8.3345
0.0000 7.9632
0.0000 8.2781
***
***
***
***
0.8513 3.8335 ***ΔEMPi , k , t
1.2213 6.2839
1.2201 6.3554
0.8168 3.6477
0.8492 3.8135
Δ(JGBi , t /DPSi , t )-0.5412 -0.3521-0.4176 -0.2730-0.4718 -0.3103***
4.1781 4.0156 ***Δ(LONi , t /DPSi , t )4.1490 3.9840 ***4.4433 4.2661
**
***
***
-9.4086 -4.1020 ***Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )-3.6779 -2.4825 **-10.0590 -4.3625-9.4204 -4.1013-3.7428 -2.5064
***
***
***
Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )/Δ(1/EMPi , k , t )-1,850.0182 -3.5821 -1,677.3799 -3.2634 -1,689.1921 -3.2812
140
140
140
140
140
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
1,324
1,326
1,324
1,326
1,324
included observations
0.14200.15390.15050.16080.1611adjusted R2-2,456.6031-2,450.1664-2,449.4129-2,444.1944-2,440.5228
Log likelihood
2.6396 ***2.5839 ***2.7152 ***2.7056 ***2.4892 ***F statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

Table 4 Robustness check for possible edogeneity of morgage loan.
4142
Estimation method
panel generalized method of moments
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
pooledpooledIndependent variables
coefficient t statisticcoefficient t statistic-2.5826 -3.2199 ***CONSTANT
0.30580.8097**-0.0019 -2.5286 **ΔROEi , t
-0.0019 -2.3556
0.0000 -2.1016 **GPPi , j , t
0.0000 -1.4763
0.00015.6181 ***LPi , j , t
0.00001.29793.98582.9348 ***Δ(LONi , t /DPSi , t )6.49806.4538 ***-43.2764 -1.6809 *Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )-58.3490 -1.4602
Instrument varialbes
Yes
Yes
CONSTANTYes
Yes
ΔNPLi , t 1
ΔROEi , t
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ΔROEi , t 1
GPPi , j , tYes
Yes
LPi , j , t
Yes
Yes
ΔEMPi , k , t
No
No
Δ(JGBi , t /DPSi , t )YesNoΔ(LONi , t /DPSi , t )Yes
Yes
Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )/Δ(1/EMPi , k , t )
No
No
140
140
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
11 (20002010)
11 (20002010)
1,326
1,324
included observations
2.29130.1608
Standard Error of Regression
17
147
Instrument rank
2.66643.3302
J statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

43

44

ΔNPLi , t
fixedpooledcoefficient t statistic***-2.2617 -3.6889***-0.0022 -3.6129**
0.0000 -2.3907***
0.00008.76414.3456
4.0971 ******-4.0104 -2.6147

ΔNPLi , t
fixedpooledcoefficient t statistic***-2.2702-3.6967***-0.0022-3.6161**0.0000-2.3895***
0.00008.77474.31794.0679 ******-3.9902-2.6004

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

140
11 (20002010)
1,326
1.6606148
8.1145140
11 (20002010)
1,324
1.6612149
9.0818

Table 5 Impact of mortgage loan before and after the financial crisis.
53
54
51
52
Estimation method
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
fixed
fixed
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
pooledpooledpooledpooledIndependent variables
coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic***
1.1579 0.8237-2.3389 -3.1663 ***CONSTANT-2.7285 -3.7712
1.1227 0.8066
**
***
*
***
-0.4240-7.2619-0.0474-1.8940
ΔNPLi , t 1
-0.0512 -2.0436-0.4458 -7.4714******-0.0094 -4.3796 ***-0.0034 -3.7781 ***ΔROEi , t
-0.0033 -3.6720-0.0099 -4.6770
**
*
**
**
-0.0041 -1.9315-0.0016 -2.4822
ΔROEi , t 1
-0.0015 -2.3667-0.0043 -1.9948**
0.0000 -1.6739 *
0.0000 -2.5532 **GPPi , j , t
0.0000 -1.9613
0.0000 -1.7077******
0.0000 0.9043
0.0000 7.0059
LPi , j , t
0.0000 6.7693
0.0000 0.8779***-0.0820 -0.2128
1.0983 4.0241 **ΔEMPi , k , t
1.1407 4.1754-0.0166 -0.0435**-5.0277 -2.4488 ***Δ(JGBi , t /DPSi , t )4.9955 2.5618******-1.0382 -0.5701
5.1967 4.1323
Δ(LONi , t /DPSi , t )-0.0482 -0.0260
5.1191 4.0596******-10.2162 -1.2877-8.9975 -3.3717
Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )-8.9658 -1.1261-9.2420 -3.4553
Δ(MRGi , t /LONi , t )/Δ(1/EMPi , k , t ) -1,745.6497 -2.8059 *** -1,319.1701 -0.8882 -1,717.8240 -2.7691 *** -1,175.3463 -0.7848
140
118
118
140
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
8 (20002007)
8 (20002007)
3 (20082010)
3 (20082010)
977
347
347
977
included observations
0.19190.28140.30670.1967
adjusted R2-1,852.8675-403.1867-394.2596-1,849.3381
Log likelihood
2.5660 ***2.0815 ***2.6044 ***2.2050 ***F statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

Table 6 Effects of growth in land price on non-performing loans.
63
6
62
Estimation method
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
ΔNPLi , t
Dependent variable
Cross-section
fixed
fixed
fixed
Period (year)
pooledpooledpooledIndependent variables
coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic coefficient t statistic-0.3021 -1.4446
0.1914 1.1224
CONSTANT
0.0672 0.8291******
8.53364.3114
3.8683 1.7022 *Δlog(LPi , j , t )4.5667 3.8114***
5.3430 1.9819
4.2349 2.2826 **Δlog(LPi , j , t 1)
5.6606 4.5622-2.7579 -1.4581
1.4514 0.7368
Δlog(LPi , j , t 2)0.1029 0.0970****
3.6772 1.8684
4.0077 1.6946 *Δlog(LPi , j , t 3)
6.1751 5.3160**
0.2020 0.0960
3.0070 1.2599
Δlog(LPi , j , t 4)
3.0172 2.4211
1.0550 0.5348
1.9204 0.7475
Δlog(LPi , j , t 5)0.9626 0.6837
131
127
123
cross-sections included
periods included (years)
 (20032011) (20032007)
8 (20082011)
1,092
612
480
included observations
0.12140.2025-0.0293
adjusted R2-1,626.7533-886.1873
0.8934Log likelihood
2.1087 ***2.1756 ***0.7709F statistic
Notes : ***, **, and * respectively denote significance at 1, 5, and 10 percent levels.

Figure 1 Aggregate non-performing loans defined by the Financial Reconstruction Act, 1999–2012.
16.0

14.0

12.0

Major & Former Long-Term: non-performing loan ratio (%)
Regional banks I & II: non-performing loan ratio (%)
All banks: non-performing loan ratio (%)

10.0

8.0

6.0

4.0

2.0

0.0
Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar
1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012
Source: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2007, pp. 505–507; Financial Services Agency, Kinyu
Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2012, pp. 482–484.

Figure 2 Sectoral non-perfoming loan defined by the Financial Reconstruction Act, 1999–2012.
16.0

14.0

City banks: non-performing loan ratio (%)
Former long-term credit banks: non-performing loan ratio (%)
Trust banks: non-performing loan ratio (%)

12.0

Regional banks I: non-performing loan ratio (%)
Regional banks II: non-performing loan ratio (%)

10.0

8.0

6.0

4.0

2.0

0.0
Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar
1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012
Source: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2007, pp. 505–507; Financial Services Agency, Kinyu
Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2012, pp. 482–484.

Figure 3 Total credit and non-perfoming loan, 1999–2012
6000000

16.0
All banks: total credit (100 million yen, left axis)
All banks: non-performing loans based on the Financial Reconstruction Act (100 million yen, left axis)
All banks: non-performing loan ratio (%)

14.0

5000000
12.0
4000000
10.0

3000000

8.0

6.0
2000000
4.0
1000000
2.0

0

0.0
Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar
1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012

Source: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2007, pp. 505–507; Financial Services Agency, Kinyu
Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2012, pp. 482–484.

Figure 4 Total credit and non-perfoming loan of major banks, 1999–2012.
4000000

16.0
Major & Former Long-Term: total credit (100 million yen, left axis)

3500000

Major & Former Long-Term: non-performing loans based on the Financial Reconstruction Act(100 million yen, left axis)
Major & Former Long-Term: non-performing loan ratio (%)

14.0

3000000

12.0

2500000

10.0

2000000

8.0

1500000

6.0

1000000

4.0

5000002.0

00.0
Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar
1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012

Source: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2007, pp. 505–507; Financial Services Agency, Kinyu
Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2012, pp. 482–484.

Figure 5 Total credit and non-perfoming loan of regional banks, 1999–2012
16.0

2500000
Regional banks I & II: total credit (100 million yen, left axis)
Regional banks I & II: non-performing loans based on the Financial Reconstruction Act (100 million yen, left axis)
Regional banks I & II: non-performing loan ratio (%)

14.0

2000000
12.0

10.0
1500000

8.0

1000000
6.0

4.0
5000002.0

00.0
Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar Sept Mar
1999 1999 2000 2000 2001 2001 2002 2002 2003 2003 2004 2004 2005 2005 2006 2006 2007 2007 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2012

Source: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2007, pp. 505–507; Financial Services Agency, Kinyu
Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), 2012, pp. 482–484.

Figure 6 JGB holding over total credit ratio, 1998–2011
60.0%
All banks: Japanese government bond / total credit (%)
City banks: Japanese government bond / total credit (%)
50.0%

Regional banks: Japanese government bond / total credit (%)

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%
FY1998FY1999FY2000FY2001

FY2002

FY2003

FY2004

FY2005

FY2006

FY2007

FY2008FY2009FY2010FY2011

Source: a) Government bond: Japan Bankers Association, “Zenkoku Ginko Zaimu Shohyo Bunseki (Analysis of Financial Statements of All Banks),” each year. b)
Total credit: Financial Services Agency, Kinyu Cho no 1 Nen (The Annual Report of the Financial Services Agency), each year.

Figure 7 Foreign securities issuance, 1997–2012.
100 million yen

Foreign issuance: stock

60000

Foreign issuance: convertible bondForeign issuance: straight bond
50000

40000

30000

20000

10000

0
1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Source: Ministry of Finance; the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Tosho Yoran (Fact Book of the Tokyo Stock Exchange); The Japan Securities
Dealers Association, Shokengyo Ho (Security Dealers Report).

20112012