The July 2018 Outlook Report that I mentioned earlier pointed out -- based on a comparison among Japan, the United States, and Germany in terms of the year-on-year rate of change in the CPI excluding food and energy for fiscal 2017 -- that the low rates of increase in administered prices and housing rent contributed significantly to the low inflation rate in Japan, which was the lowest among the three countries.
5 The January 2020 Outlook Report pointed to the continued lackluster  See https://www.boj.or.jp/en/mopo/outlook/gor1807a.pdf. See Masai Takako, "Economic Activity, Prices, and Monetary Policy in Japan: Speech at a Meeting with Business Leaders in Mie," Bank of Japan, September 2019. 5 See Box 6 "Developments in Administered Prices and Housing Rent," in the July 2018 Outlook Report.