Japan said it stepped into the foreign exchange market twice last quarter, as speculation grows that more moves may be brewing given the recent bout of renewed yen weakness.

The Finance Ministry intervened on July 11 and 12, spending ¥3.17 trillion ($20.7 billion) and ¥2.37 trillion respectively to prop up the yen, according to the daily breakdown data for the quarter ended September released Friday.

Before the government took action in July, the yen was trading past ¥160 per dollar, a 38-year low, partly driven by speculators betting on the wide borrowing cost gap between Japan and the United States.