Japan's core consumer inflation accelerated for the fourth straight month in August and tracked comfortably above the central bank's 2% target, data showed on Friday, keeping alive expectations for further interest rate hikes.

Japan’s key inflation gauge accelerated in August for a fourth consecutive month, hours before the Bank of Japan is scheduled to wrap up its latest policy decision meeting.

Japanese inflation rose slightly in August, with prices up 2.8 percent year-on-year, official data showed Friday, hours before the Bank of Japan was widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged.

China and Japan may be close to a breakthrough over Beijing’s ban on seafood imports from Japan, imposed last year in response to the release of treated radioactive water into the sea from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant,

China imposed a ban last year after Japan began releasing treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. They have agreed to expand monitoring of the water.

China will revisit its ban on marine imports from Japan and work towards resuming imports following an expansion of regulatory monitoring of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday.