According to The Wall Street Journal’s Mari Iwata, Tokyo—A top Japanese economic policy maker warned that a further sharp drop in the yen could harm the country’s economy, tempering the full-throated yen-weakening rhetoric of the new government that has successfully pushed the Japanese currency down more than 10% against the dollar in less than two months.

“The yen has come to a good level,” Economy Minister Akira Amari said in an interview Monday on Japan‘s TBS television station, the latest in a series of comments from cabinet members suggesting that officials are happy with an exchange rate of about ¥90 to the dollar—but not much weaker.

“If it falls further to the three-digit level, it would boost import prices, weighing on the everyday life of the nation,” Mr. Amari said, implying that officials may try to step on the brakes if markets seem to be pushing the dollar to the ¥100 level—a mark unseen since 2009.

The dollar traded in the 89-yen range in Asia markets Monday, flirting with the 90-yen level for the first time since June 2010. That is considerably stronger for the dollar—and weaker for the yen—than the 79-yen range it hit in mid-November.

The yen started weakening two months ago when general elections were called and polls forecast a victory for then-opposition leader Shinzo Abe. He based his campaign on calls for aggressive economic stimulus, and a weakening of the yen. Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory in the mid-December ballot, and he and his aides have since pushed aggressively for policies seen as weakening the yen, from bigger government spending to more monetary easing from the Bank of Japan.

Read More