After three decades of near-zero borrowing costs, the Bank of Japan is preparing to raise its benchmark interest rate to heights not seen since the mid-1990s — a quiet but profound turning of the page in one of the world's most consequential monetary experiments. Persistent inflation, proving more durable than policymakers anticipated, has convinced BOJ officials that the era of ultra-loose accommodation has run its course. This is not a crisis response but a deliberate reckoning: Japan is choosing, carefully and with full awareness of the costs, to rejoin the world of conventional monetary gr