Bank of Japan Scraps Radical Policy, Makes First Rate Hike in 17 Years

TOKYO—The Bank of Japan (BOJ) ended eight years of negative interest rates and other remnants of its unorthodox policy on Tuesday, making a historic shift away from its focus on reflating growth with decades of massive monetary stimulus. While the move was Japan’s first interest rate hike in 17 years, it still keeps rates stuck around zero as a fragile economic recovery forces the central bank to go slow on further rises in borrowing costs, analysts say. The shift makes Japan the last central bank to exit negative rates, and ends an era in which policymakers around the world sought to prop up growth through cheap money and unconventional monetary tools....