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(Updates with auction outcome, comments)
By Junko Fujita and Brigid Riley
TOKYO, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Japan's 10-year government bond (JGB) yield on Tuesday inched lower despite the weaker outcome of an auction, the first such event after the Bank of Japan made a shift in its yield curve control (YCC).
The auction for the 371 series of the 10-year bonds received bids worth 3.64 times the bonds sold, lower than a ratio of 4.02 times at the previous auction.
"The result of the auction was on the weaker side of the expectation, mainly because the BOJ tweaked the YCC last Friday and we are still in the early stage of adjusting ourselves to their new framework," Naomi Muguruma, senior market economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley.
The 10-year JGB yield was last at 0.590%, down one basis point (bp) from the previous session. The yield hit a fresh nine-year high of 0.605% on Monday after the BOJ set a de-facto policy ceiling of the benchmark at 1%.
"It seems the BOJ wants to see how the yield moves for a while," said Takeshi Ishida, strategist at Resona Holdings.
"The BOJ conducted an additional bond-buying operation in the previous session but only by a small amount. Their defence of the yield was different from what it did in December."
In December, the BOJ widened the trading band of the 10-year bond yield to 0.5% from 0.25% and conducted massive bond buys after that to contain yields.
The BOJ in the previous session conducted an emergency bond buying after the 10-year yield crossed 0.6% for the first time since 2014.
The central bank also conducted its daily offer of unlimited bond buying twice on Friday, when the bank announced the new rate policy.
The Ministry of Finance said the yield for the lowest accepted price at the latest auction was 0.603%, its highest since June 2014, while the yield at the average price was 0.594%, its highest since June 2014.
($1 = 142.6800 yen) (Reporting by Junko Fujita and Brigid Riley in Tokyo ; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Sohini Goswami)