Japan's core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 1.6% year over year in June, remaining below the central bank's 2% target for the fifth straight month.
The latest pace of growth accelerated from the 1.4% increase in May, and was in line with the consensus forecast tracked by Investing.com.
Headline inflation likewise gathered pace to a six-month high of 1.7% from 1.5% in May, according to data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on Friday.
The latest prints suggest that elevated energy costs linked to the Middle East conflict continued to affect prices at home, as core-core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, decelerated to 1.7% in June from 1.8% a month ago.
Kerosene prices jumped 16.5% year over year in June, contributing 0.08 percentage points to overall headline inflation.
Overall energy costs, including those from gasoline, electricity and kerosene prices, contributed 0.20 percentage points to the headline reading.
That is despite the government abolishing gasoline tax and related policies, which shaved off 0.74 percentage points from the energy sector's contribution to the headline print.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, Japan's headline inflation softened to 0.3% from 0.4%, core inflation eased to 0.2% from 0.4%, while core-core inflation was unchanged at 0.2%.
The release came ahead of the Bank of Japan's policy meeting next week. Analysts widely expect the BOJ to keep rates steady at the conclusion of the meeting, according to Investing.com.
On Wednesday, the US Treasury Department called on the BOJ to hike rates, warning that "inflation has strained household purchasing power."
"Monetary policy normalization would help anchor inflation expectations and reduce excessive exchange rate volatility," the Treasury Department said in its latest report.
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