---
title: "The Dollar Lost ~59% of Its Buying Power Since 1990. The Yen Lost ~17%."
description: "Rebasing US and Japanese consumer prices to 1990 shows a stark split: $100 of 1990 buying power needs about $247 today, while ¥100 needs only about ¥121. Data from BLS and Statistics Japan."
url: "https://worldcalculators.org/stories/dollar-vs-yen-inflation/"
canonical: "https://worldcalculators.org/stories/dollar-vs-yen-inflation/"
---

# Two currencies, two fates: what 35 years did to the dollar and the yen

Rebasing US and Japanese consumer prices to 1990 shows a stark split: $100 of 1990 buying power needs about $247 today, while ¥100 needs only about ¥121. Data from BLS and Statistics Japan.

## Quick answer

Inflation isn't an abstract index — it's the speed at which cash savings decay. An American who kept $10,000 under the mattress in 1990 holds about $4,100 of 1990-era buying power today. A Japanese saver doing the same kept about ¥8,300 of every ¥10,000. Neither outcome is "good" — Japan's near-zero inflation came packaged with decades of near-zero wage growth and the deflationary stagnation of its Lost Decades — but the contrast is the cleanest real-world demonstration that the same act of saving has wildly different consequences depending on the currency it happens in.

## Why this matters for your money

Inflation isn't an abstract index — it's the speed at which cash savings decay. An American who kept $10,000 under the mattress in 1990 holds about $4,100 of 1990-era buying power today. A Japanese saver doing the same kept about ¥8,300 of every ¥10,000. Neither outcome is "good" — Japan's near-zero inflation came packaged with decades of near-zero wage growth and the deflationary stagnation of its Lost Decades — but the contrast is the cleanest real-world demonstration that the same act of saving has wildly different consequences depending on the currency it happens in.
It also reframes investment returns. A US portfolio had to grow ~150% over the period just to stand still in real terms; a Japanese one needed ~20%. "Money held its value" and "money grew" are different claims, and the gap between them is exactly what this chart measures.

## Method

US series: Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, annual averages, rebased to 1990 = 100. Japan series: Statistics Bureau of Japan CPI (2020 = 100 base), rebased to 1990 = 100. Figures are approximate annual averages rounded for readability; both series are refreshed each January when full-year data lands. Run your own years through the inflation calculator .

## Journalists & bloggers

This chart and the underlying rebased series are free to reproduce with a link to this page. For the raw series or a custom country pairing (UK, Germany, India, Brazil), the method above is fully reproducible from the cited primary sources.

Source: https://worldcalculators.org/stories/dollar-vs-yen-inflation/
Markdown mirror of the HTML page. Prefer this URL for RAG; the interactive calculator still lives on the HTML page.