Also available in: Português (Brasil)
The purchasing power of money in Japan over time
Converting money across time is the only fair way to compare prices in Japan. With the World Bank index, available from 1960 to 2025, you can see that ¥100 in 2000 corresponds to ¥114.98 in 2025. The top of the series is 1974, a year of 23.2% inflation; the recent decade ran at 1.3% a year on average and 2025 closed at 3.2%.
Annual inflation over the last three decades (1996 to 2025)
| Year | Inflation (%) |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 3.2 |
| 2024 | 2.7 |
| 2023 | 3.3 |
| 2022 | 2.5 |
| 2021 | -0.2 |
| 2020 | -0 |
| 2019 | 0.5 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2017 | 0.5 |
| 2016 | -0.1 |
| 2015 | 0.8 |
| 2014 | 2.8 |
| 2013 | 0.3 |
| 2012 | -0 |
| 2011 | -0.3 |
| 2010 | -0.7 |
| 2009 | -1.4 |
| 2008 | 1.4 |
| 2007 | 0.1 |
| 2006 | 0.2 |
| 2005 | -0.3 |
| 2004 | -0 |
| 2003 | -0.3 |
| 2002 | -0.9 |
| 2001 | -0.7 |
| 2000 | -0.7 |
| 1999 | -0.3 |
| 1998 | 0.7 |
| 1997 | 1.7 |
| 1996 | 0.1 |
What ¥100 from each decade is worth in 2025
| Decade | Annual average (%) | ¥100 back then, in 2025 money |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | 5.3 | ¥622.18 |
| 1970s | 9 | ¥361.31 |
| 1980s | 2.5 | ¥152.98 |
| 1990s | 1.2 | ¥124.87 |
| 2000s | -0.3 | ¥114.98 |
| 2010s | 0.5 | ¥118.04 |
| 2020s | 1.9 | ¥111.93 |
What the series shows
No period weighed more than the 1970s, which averaged 9% a year; at the opposite end, 2004 was the most stable year, at -0%. Between 2000 and 2025, the accumulated rise was 15%, meaning ¥100 from 2000 became ¥114.98. The series records 15 years of deflation, when prices fell instead of rising.
Compare peaks, averages and harsh decades across 40 countries in the archive Inflation around the world.
Honest limits of these numbers
The index here is the World Bank national average annual CPI (FP.CPI.TOTL, base 2010 = 100), a whole-country average over whole years, blind to regional differences and specific months. For contracts, rents and legally binding adjustments, what counts is each country's official index (IBGE's IPCA in Brazil, the BLS CPI-U in the United States), not this series. For Japan, the archive spans 66 years, from 1960 to 2025; other countries enter the dataset in different years. The output currency is always the current one (JPY); since the index is a continuous chain, past currency switches do not break the math.
Source: World Bank Open Data, indicators FP.CPI.TOTL and FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG, CC BY-4.0 license, snapshot of 2026-07-10. The Japan equivalences are computed by this site from the ratio of the index values.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources