The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.
That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.
The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.
This was bound to happen because trading volumes were just so high in both japan and Korea recently because of the fact that Chinese exchanges are shutting down soon. So I can see what the Japanese government is coming from.
As long as this "scrutinization" does not turn into full scale shutting down exchanges and implementing very strict KYC and AML, i really don't mind seeing the Japanese government do this.
But i do have a feeling that maybe this will turn into something like China, first scrutinization of exchanges and then just banning them completely.