The Bank of Japan has finally announced an interest rate hike, its first in 17 years. After seemingly endless rumours, the country’s unconventional monetary easing policies are being unwound with the bank declaring that a new era of stable inflation has begun.

The reaction to the news here in Tokyo is generally, cautiously positive. After years of a sclerotic economy and, to quote Niall Ferguson, “institutionalised inertia”, at long last something is happening. The Keidanren (the most important of Japan’s business lobby groups) called it “the appropriate policy decision at the appropriate time”, while the Chamber of Commerce declared it “favourable”.

The negative rate policy, whereby banks pay to park their money at the central bank, originated in 2016 as part of the previous BOJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s attempt to tame deflation, a legacy of the post-bubble economy years. The same methods were employed by the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank.

There is not much evidence it did any good; but while the experiment was abandoned elsewhere, in Japan it endured, possibly due to Kuroda’s personality and his stubborn refusal to give up on his signature inflationary dream.