With regard to liberalisation of financial markets, Japan’s Ministry of Finance and the US Treasury set up the “Yen-Dollar Committee” in November 1983. The Committee released its report in May 1984, which provided a detailed plan to liberalise Japan’s financial and capital markets and to internationalise the yen.
Meanwhile, the yen which had briefly reached 177 yen to the dollar in the late 1970s, generally moved in the range of 200 to 250 yen to the dollar during the first half of the 1980s, and the view that the yen should strengthen to reduce Japan’s trade and current account surplus mounted among its major trading partners.