Another longstanding tradition in Japan was that prices of a wide range of goods and services were raised at the beginning of each fiscal year in April. This practice also disappeared.
In order to escape from this deflationary equilibrium, it was necessary to dispel the deflationary mindset – that is, the entrenched view that prices will not rise – and achieve a state in which firms and households act based on the assumption that prices will continue to rise moderately in the future. In the economics jargon, inflation expectations needed to be raised.