TOKYO, Aug. 17 -- For a country that has spent two years watching food prices climb and energy bills thicken, Japanese households have quietly started to push back. The result arrived Friday in a number the Bank of Japan cannot ignore: gross domestic product expanded just 1.1 percent on an annualized basis in the second quarter of 2026, the government said, missing market forecasts and straining the central bank's months-long effort to normalize interest rates without breaking the recovery.

The Cabinet Office reported growth of 0.3 percent from the previous quarter, the third consecutive period of expansion. But the pace fell well short of consensus estimates that had clustered around 1.5 to 1.8 percent annualized, leaving economists to ...