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Data last updated: Nov 05, 2026
Dividend Yield: 3.80%
Years of Dividend History: 28
The iShares MSCI Japan ETF dividend comes from a fund that tracks large- and mid-cap Japanese equities, giving investors broad exposure to Japan's equity market in a single holding. EWJ currently yields 3.84%, placing it in moderate yield territory. The fund has paid dividends across 28 years of history, making it one of the longer-running international equity ETFs by dividend record. That yield level, backed by a diversified basket of Japanese companies, suits dividend investors who want international equity income without concentrating in a single stock.
iShares MSCI Japan ETF dividend safety depends on the aggregate distributions passed through from the underlying large- and mid-cap Japanese equities the fund holds, not on a single company's earnings or payout ratio, making the traditional payout ratio metric not applicable (fund/ETF). The most data-supported pressure point is year-over-year volatility: the history table shows multiple years where payments declined meaningfully, including a drop from $1.2033 in 2019 to $0.7000 in 2020, reflecting how shifts in underlying holdings' distributions flow directly through to EWJ shareholders.
iShares MSCI Japan ETF dividend history shows a CAGR of 11.9% per year from 2008 to 2025. Per-share payments grew from $0.5400 to $3.6526 over that window (2026 is a partial year and excluded from this calculation). The largest annual increase in the window was 132.2% in 2025, which is an outlier that skews the long-run average upward and does not reflect the year-to-year pattern across the full history.
| Period | CAGR | From | To |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5-Year | +39.2% | $0.70 (2020) | $3.65 (2025) |
| 10-Year | +19.5% | $0.62 (2015) | $3.65 (2025) |
EWJ fits dividend investors who want exposure to Japan's large- and mid-cap equity market and can tolerate year-to-year income variability. The current yield of 3.84% falls in the moderate (2-4%) range, which is meaningful for international equity income but comes with a catch: the fund's distributions fluctuate with what its underlying Japanese holdings pay out, not a fixed corporate commitment. The 11.9% CAGR from 2008 to 2025 looks attractive on paper, but the history table shows multiple down years alongside that growth. What an investor gets is broad Japanese equity income at a moderate yield; what they accept is unpredictable year-to-year payment levels.
| Payment Date | Amount per Share |
|---|---|
| 2026-06-15 | $0.5010 |
| 2025-12-16 | $3.0614 |
| 2025-06-16 | $0.5912 |
| 2024-12-17 | $1.0644 |
| 2024-06-11 | $0.5087 |
| 2023-12-20 | $0.8746 |
| 2023-06-07 | $0.4306 |
| 2022-12-13 | $0.1243 |
| 2022-06-09 | $0.5459 |
| 2021-12-13 | $0.8881 |
| Year | Total Dividends |
|---|---|
| 2026 | $0.5010 |
| 2025 | $3.6526 |
| 2024 | $1.5732 |
| 2023 | $1.3052 |
| 2022 | $0.6702 |
Project income from EWJ with the EWJ dividend calculator or track your full portfolio with the dividend tracker.