Loan loss provisions (LLP) are major accruals for banking industry and have a significant impact on the bank performance. Because of this significance along with the flexibility allowed for management’s decision, LLP may be subject to management’s discretion. Among others, signaling hypothesis predicts that a bank manager with better future prospect increasingly builds up LLP to communicate his/her private information to the market. Contrary to prior studies, however, recent research raises questions for this hypothesis (Ahmed et al. 1999, for example). This paper examines the behavior of bank managers in Japan during mid 1990’s and early 2000’s. Empirical results show that above average levels of LLP associate with earnings’ recoveries up to following two firm-years, consistently supporting the signaling behavior by bank managers in Japan. Managers also show income-smoothing tendency to offset adverse effects on current performance by large LLP.