Anticipation of quarterly reports encourages Tokyo

In Japan on Monday, the pharmaceuticals sector was generally up, while the transport sector was down and technology stocks were mixed.

Chugai Pharmaceutical, associated with Switzerland’s Roche, was up 1.9 percent as it reported good quarterly profits, mostly due to the sales of its flu drug Tamiflu. This news also helped rival companies as well, with Sankyo rising 2.2 percent and Takeda Pharmaceutical up 1.6 percent.

In the transportation sector, West Japan Railway fell 3.6 percent after a fatal accident involving one of its trains. Japan Airlines fell 0.7 percent.

In the technology sector, Hitachi rose 0.3 percent as investors awaited the release of a quarterly earnings report that was expected to hold good news, and Matsushita Electric Industrial advanced 0.3 percent. But Trend Micro fell 4.2 percent on the report of a computer glitch, as machines using its software were victims of a programming bug over the weekend.

The Tokyo markets were up slightly on Monday, mostly on anticipation of the release of several domestic quarterly earnings reports and on indications that tensions with China were beginning to ease even though a weekend meeting between leaders of Japan and China did not completely resolve the dispute over a Japanese history textbook.

The Nikkei 225 was up 0.3 percent to 11,073.77 and the Topix advanced by 0.1 percent to 1,132.17.

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