Nomura Holdings rose 1.78% after Japan's largest brokerage said it would book $2.9 billion worth of pain from the collapse of US investment fund Archegos.
Troubled wealth manager AMP jumped to the top of the index, advancing 7.6%, after it announced plans of a spin off and re-branding of its unit AMP Capital's private markets business, ending talks with Ares Management to sell the business.
Sony rose 1.25 percent to 11,720 yen after it reached a deal allowing Disney to broadcast and stream films from Sony Pictures after they run on Netflix, gaining access to future instalments of franchises such as "Spider-Man".
Other automakers were also lower, with Toyota trading down 1.38 percent at 8,302 yen, Honda off 1.71 percent at 3,218 yen and Nissan down 2.55 percent at 543 yen.
But analysts said that a combination of dollar weakness and a lull in fresh data ahead of upcoming corporate results had conspired to tamp down enthusiasm.