TOKYO: Tokyo stocks opened higher on Friday, recouping some of their sharp losses the previous day, after a solid performance on Wall Street.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index, which lost nearly two percent on Thursday as the yen appreciated, gained 0.44 percent or 91.60 points to 21,137.84 in early trade. The broader Topix index was up 0.27 percent or 4.10 points at 1,538.37.
"Rebounds from excessive selling (on Thursday) are expected after US stocks stabilised," Okasan Online chief strategist Yoshihiro Ito said in a note.
Despite lingering disquiet about the US-China trade war, Wall Street rose barely out of the red on Thursday on hopes for lower interest rates in the United States.
A top Federal Reserve policymaker, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams, reiterated the signal that the US central bank was likely to cut interest rates later this month, shoring up stocks and weakening the dollar.
In individual stocks trade, theatre operator and film distributor Shiochiku lost 1.89 percent to 11,420 yen on fears of the negative impact of a suspected arson attack at a major animation production company in Japan that killed at least 33 people.
Sony rose 0.51 percent to 5,769 yen and Toyota climbed 0.76 percent to 7,028 yen.
The dollar was trading at 107.45 yen, up from 107.30 yen in New York Thursday afternoon but still down from 107.67 yen when the Tokyo market closed on Thursday.
The yen hardly moved after government data showed Japanese consumer prices rose at the slowest pace in nearly two years in June despite the Bank of Japan's massive credit-easing aimed at achieving two-percent inflation.
The nation's core consumer prices, excluding volatile fresh food prices, rose 0.6 percent from a year earlier in June, a rise for the 30th consecutive month but the slowest pace since July 2017.
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