Japan crossed a financial Rubicon yesterday as the country sold new 10-year bonds with a yield below zero at a government auction.

昨天，日本实施了破釜沉舟的金融举措，在一轮政府拍卖中销售了一批负收益率的新十年期债券。

The sale is the latest sign of a worldwide collapse in borrowing costs which has upended assumptions about the workings of financial markets, as policymakers take ever more drastic steps to stimulate economic growth.

这轮销售是借款成本全球范围大幅下滑的最新迹象。随着各国政策制定者采取日益激进的举措刺激经济增长，借款成本的急剧下降已颠覆了人们对金融市场运作方式的原有认识。

It also highlights the challenge of retaining support for unconventional central bank measures, with Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, struggling to maintain momentum behind his “Abenomics” growth policies.

它还凸显出日本维持对央行非常规举措的支持所面临的挑战。目前，日本首相安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)的“安倍经济学”(Abenomics)经济增长政策已难以为继。

Disruption and uncertainty created by the Bank of Japan’s announcement of negative interest rates has left 50 per cent of voters dissatisfied with the government’s economic policy, according to a Nikkei poll published this week.

根据本周由日本经济新闻社(Nikkei)发布的民意测验，日本央行(BoJ)宣布负利率政策所引发的混乱和不确定性，已导致50%的选民不满日本政府的经济政策。

The world’s third-largest economy last month followed Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the European Central Bank by cutting short-term interest rates below zero to prevent stagnation and deflation.

继瑞士、瑞典、丹麦和欧洲央行(ECB)之后，这一全球第三大经济体上个月也把短期利率降至零以下，以防止经济停滞和通货紧缩。

The ECB is expected to announce further monetary easing next week, and 10-year German Bunds yield only 13 basis points. Japan is the second country to sell 10-year bonds at a negative yield, after Switzerland became the first in April last year.

欧洲央行预计下周会公布进一步货币宽松政策，而十年期德国国债收益率则只有13个基点。日本是继瑞士之后第二个以负收益率销售十年期国债的国家。去年4月，瑞士成为首个销售负收益率国债的国家。

The auction — of Y2.2tn ($19.4bn) in 10-year paper, at an average yield of minus 0.024 per cent — means investors have paid a fee to lend money for a decade to the government of Japan, the most indebted G7 nation.

日本拍卖价值2.2万亿日元（合194亿美元）、平均收益率为-0.024%的10年期债券，意味着投资者付钱把资金借给日本政府10年时间。日本是七国集团(G7)中负债最高的国家。

“I don’t think it would be surprising if one day this happened in Germany,” said Peter Goves, European interest rate strategist for Citigroup.

“如果有一天这发生在德国，我不认为那会让人感到惊讶，”花旗集团(Citigroup)欧洲利率策略师彼得•格罗夫(Peter Goves)表示。

The buying appears to have been almost entirely by dealers and speculators looking to hold the paper for a brief time or covering short sales accumulated in expectation of the yield falling into negative territory. Traders expect much of it to be flipped directly back to Japan’s central bank in a few weeks as part of a bond-buying programme.

认购者几乎全部是希望短期持有这些债券、或者结清之前由于预期债券收益率落入负值而累积的空头头寸的交易商和投机者。交易商预计，大部分债券会在几周内直接回流入日本央行，成为一项债券购买计划的一部分。

Big investors, which include Japan’s biggest pension funds and banks, are understood to have stayed away from the auction as the fund management industry readjusts its strategies for the distortions of a financial environment where negative rates become the norm.

据信日本最大的养老基金和银行等大投资者没有参与拍卖，因为基金管理行业正在根据负利率变成常态而发生扭曲的金融环境重新调整策略。

As well as forcing wholesale adjustments to the structure of many investment products, analysts at Nomura have warned that the Japanese government bond market could now be prone to regular phases “where fair prices are no longer obvious”.

除了迫使许多投资产品在批发环节调整结构，野村(Nomura)的分析师们警告，日本政府债券市场现在可能容易进入“合理价格不再明显”的常态阶段。

Analysts described the sale as the latest in a string of “inevitable distortions” that have descended on Japan since the BoJ revealed its negative rates policy on January 29.

分析师们将此次销售描述为在日本央行1月29日公布负利率政策后，降临在日本的一连串“不可避免的扭曲”中的最新一例。