Yamada Hiroshi / White & Green Co., Ltd. | March 2026
■ Sources (March 2026)
- Bloomberg (March 24): Japan’s Ministry of Finance conducted hearings with major domestic banks on the possibility of intervening in crude oil futures markets to correct yen depreciation and surging energy costs.
- Reuters / Newsweek Japan (March 23): Japan’s currency authorities held hearings with multiple financial institutions with a view to intervening in crude oil futures markets. The report noted that the U.S. considered similar action in early March but ultimately decided against it.
- Nikkei (March 26): “An unprecedented scheme has emerged in which the Ministry of Finance would intervene in crude oil futures markets.” The paper reported that market participants were widely skeptical of its effectiveness.
- Tokyo Hodo Shimbun (March 26): Reported that the government is seriously considering a plan to use the Foreign Exchange Fund Special Account (FEFSA) to sell large volumes of crude oil futures.
- Arab News (March 25): Cited Jiji Press reporting and distributed the news internationally.
Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama stated that “it is widely said that speculative movements in the crude oil market are also affecting the foreign exchange market,” adding that the government would “take all necessary measures in every possible domain.”
The phrase “unprecedented” is the key to understanding this proposal. A government that finds itself “considering” unprecedented measures is, in effect, declaring that all conventional tools have ceased to function.
The Law of Policy Deterioration in the 270-Year Civilization Cycle
In the 270-Year Civilization Cycle theory proposed by this author, each hegemonic cycle passes through four phases: Establishment, Expansion, Saturation, and Collapse. Upon entering the Collapse phase, the quality of governance deteriorates structurally, triggering the following five-stage cycle of policy failure. This pattern has been observed independently across multiple civilizations and is not a coincidence — it is a necessary consequence of the internal logic of a governing principle reaching its limits.
- 1 Avoidance of Root CausesConfronting the root cause would delegitimize the existing order. Instead, the problem is externalized as “foreign speculation” or “enemy conspiracy,” and superficial countermeasures are staged. In the current case, the root cause of yen depreciation is the physical loss of energy supply due to the Hormuz blockade. The government’s language substitutes “speculation” for this structural reality.
- 2 Half-Hearted Intervention and Market LearningUndersized interventions produce no lasting effect. Market participants learn the intervention pattern and exploit it. George Soros’s dismantling of the Bank of England’s pound defense in 1992 is the canonical example of this principle.
- 3 Escalation Under Public PressureDespite the absence of results, political pressure demands more. Scale expands. As losses accumulate, the sunk-cost trap deepens, making retreat structurally impossible.
- 4 The Appearance of the “Unprecedented Measure”When the toolkit is exhausted, policies without precedent are placed on the table. Direct intervention in crude oil futures is precisely this stage. The adjective “unprecedented” is itself the signal that normal instruments have completely broken down.
- 5 Forced External ResetVoluntary transformation does not occur. The cycle terminates only through external shocks — revolution, conquest, fiscal collapse, or foreign coercion.
Comparative Table: The “Unprecedented Measure” Common to Every Fallen State
| Civilization | Collapse Period | Root Problem | “Unprecedented Measure” | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roman Empire | 3rd century (193–284 AD) | Military cost expansion / tax revenue shortfall | Silver content of coinage reduced from 95% to 3% + Edict on Maximum Prices | Hyperinflation / reversion to barter economy / Fall of Western Rome, 476 AD |
| Ming Dynasty | Early 17th century (1600–1644) | Treasury exhaustion / frontier defense costs | Eunuch tax collectors deployed / military pay suspended | Li Zicheng Rebellion / Fall of Beijing, 1644 |
| French Ancien Régime | Late 18th century (1756–1789) | Fiscal ruin following Seven Years’ War defeat | Repeated attempts to tax the privileged classes | French Revolution / abolition of the monarchy, 1789 |
| British Empire | Early 20th century (1914–1945) | Financial exhaustion from two world wars | Return to gold standard at pre-war parity (1925) / pound defense interventions | Dollar supplants pound at Bretton Woods / dissolution of empire |
| Japan (present) | 2020s | Physical energy supply loss due to Hormuz blockade | Direct intervention in crude oil futures markets “under consideration” (March 2026) | ? |
Structural Analysis of Each Case
Case 01 — Roman Empire
Rome: Slow Self-Destruction Through Currency Debasement
Rome’s fiscal crisis originated in the structural expansion of military spending. Once territorial expansion reached its limits in the late 2nd century, revenue from conquest dried up while the cost of frontier defense continued to grow. The government’s chosen remedy was currency debasement. The silver content of the denarius, which exceeded 95% under Augustus, had fallen below 3% by the mid-3rd century; by 260 AD, silver-plated bronze coins were being circulated as “silver currency.” The practice of melting down old coins, diluting the silver, and recasting two coins from one was repeated with each change of emperor, producing inflation on the order of several dozen times.
This escalated to the “unprecedented measure” of the Edict on Maximum Prices (301 AD), which set upper limits on more than 1,000 categories of goods. The market largely ignored it. The logical structure of using imperial decree to suppress market prices is identical to Japan’s 2026 proposal to suppress crude oil prices through futures market intervention.
Case 02 — Ming Dynasty
The Ming: The Lethal Step of Suspending Military Pay
The Ming dynasty’s fiscal collapse unfolded in stages. The prolonged wars of the Wanli Emperor’s reign (1572–1620), the conflict with the Later Jin (Qing), and repeated droughts eroded tax revenues. The government progressively reduced and ultimately suspended the salaries of troops defending the frontier. Starving soldiers turned to plunder and formed the core of Li Zicheng’s rebel army. The sequence from “intensified taxation” (Stage 2) through “deployment of eunuch tax collectors” as an unprecedented Stage 4 measure to the fall of Beijing in 1644 (Stage 5) is a textbook illustration of the five-stage cycle.
Case 03 — French Ancien Régime
France: The End of a Regime That Could Not Break the Wall of Privilege
The Seven Years’ War of 1756 marked the fiscal breaking point for France. Defeat in the colonial contest with Britain caused debt to explode. Louis XV and Louis XVI repeatedly attempted the then-revolutionary policy of taxing the privileged classes, but were blocked each time by the resistance of the nobility and the parlements. The convening of the Estates-General in 1789 was itself an “unprecedented measure” in search of a solution to the fiscal crisis. The moment the Third Estate autonomously declared itself a National Assembly became the trigger for revolution. This is the canonical case of an “unprecedented measure” that, in the act of being adopted, lit the fuse of regime collapse.
In the current 270-year cycle, 2026 corresponds precisely to the year the Seven Years’ War began (1756).
Case 04 — British Empire
Britain: The Attachment to Reserve Currency Status That Ended an Empire
Two world wars left Britain financially exhausted and transformed it into a net debtor nation. Nevertheless, in 1925 it took the “unprecedented decision” to return to the gold standard at pre-war parity. Preserving the pound’s status as the world’s reserve currency was prioritized over restoring the empire’s actual economic strength. The result was an overvalued pound that undermined British export competitiveness, forcing another departure from gold in 1931. In the design of the Bretton Woods system, the dollar secured the role of reserve currency. The empire’s end was structurally sealed by its attachment to an existing tool — pound defense — long after that tool had ceased to serve its purpose.
Why “Unprecedented Measures” Appear at the End of Every Cycle
What mechanism do these four cases share? The governing principle of a 270-year cycle functions in the cycle’s first half. In the second half, however, that same governing principle has itself become the source of new problems. The ruling class was trained within that principle and rose to power through it. They are structurally incapable of thinking outside it.
And so they continue to apply tools that no longer work. Rome reached for currency debasement; France reached for its traditional tax apparatus; Britain reached for pound defense interventions. The crude oil futures intervention proposal is a logical extension of the existing tool of currency market intervention. In the respect that it does not step outside the existing conceptual framework by a single inch, it is structurally identical to every preceding case.
The Law of Peripherality
Fundamental transformation can only come from outside the existing governing principle. The bearer of the next order never emerges from the current center. The new order after Rome came from the Germanic peoples; the order after the French Revolution came from the new bourgeoisie; the order after the British Empire came from the other side of the Atlantic. The seeds of the next hegemony lie in what is currently “peripheral” to the existing order.
Japan’s Position in 2026 and the Road Ahead
Rakuten Securities market analyst Satoshi Yoshida assessed the intervention proposal as “technically possible but realistically difficult,” noting that the WTI crude oil futures market involves investors, nations, and corporations from around the world, and that any intervention would affect the entire global economy — a scope incomparably broader than currency market intervention (Rakuten Securities Toushiru, March 26, 2026).
Market skepticism is justified. But more important than whether the intervention is actually implemented is the historical significance of the fact that it is being “considered” at all.
As the comparative table shows, the lag between the adoption of an “unprecedented measure” and the terminal collapse of the state or regime has been shortening: roughly 200 years for Rome, several decades for the Ming, 33 years for France, and 20 years for the British Empire. Given the speed of information and capital markets in the modern era, that lag may compress further still.
The appearance of “crude oil futures intervention” on Japan’s policy agenda in March 2026 should be recorded, within the framework of the 270-Year Civilization Cycle, as a signal that the current governing principle has reached Stage 4.
This article was written as an analytical extension of the 270-Year Civilization Cycle series published by White & Green Co., Ltd. (white-green.jp). Related academic papers are available on Zenodo.
Paper A (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19301666) / Paper B (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19301928) / Paper D (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19302054) / Paper E (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19302143)