Foreign exchange traders are cutting back their bearish positions against the yen amid doubts about the Japanese government's program to boost the economy.

That program has included massive monetary easing, which pushed the yen down. But last week Bank of Japan policy-board member Takahide Kiuchi said the BOJ doesn't have to rush to meet its goal of 2 percent inflation, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Japan's core consumer prices rose 1.3 percent in the year through January.

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Kiuchi also said further easing steps could do more to hurt the economy than help it.

"We are quite cautious at this point in time and prefer not to take an aggressive view" on the yen, Luca Avellini, a partner on the currency desk at JCI Capital, told The Journal.

Since the end of last year, players in the futures market have slashed their short yen positions by 53 percent, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the paper reports.

The dollar has slid 3 percent against the yen this year. The greenback soared 21 percent against its Japanese counterpart last year, after the government established a weak yen as a vital component of its economic revival plan.

Meanwhile, one factor that used to boost the yen in March, repatriation of currency by Japanese exporters ahead of the March 31 fiscal year-end, has lessened, Reuters reports. That's because many Japanese manufacturers have moved their production overseas.

"Repatriation obviously still takes place this time of the year, but it's no longer a festive-type market event we used to see years ago," Bart Wakabayashi, head of foreign exchange at State Street in Tokyo, told the news service.

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