Tokyo stocks have closed 0.46 per cent higher as investors largely discounted the widely expected Greek default.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday rose 93.59 points to end at 20,329.32, while the Topix index of all first-section issues was up 0.37 per cent, or 6.01 points, at 1,636.41.
Uncertainty over the Greek situation kept investors on the sidelines, but a stronger than expected business confidence survey by the Bank of Japan helped underpin the market.
“The extreme wariness toward Greece does seem to be fading,” Hiroichi Nishi, a manager at SMBC Nikko Securities, told Bloomberg News.
“But until the referendum, it’s like annoyingly having a tiny fishbone stuck in the back of your throat.”
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plunged bailout talks into chaos as he announced a referendum for Sunday on whether to accept reform plans that he said would humiliate the country.
Masayuki Otani, market analyst at Securities Japan, said: “We still don’t know if we will actually face the worst-case scenario of Greece’s ‘no’ to austerity proposals in the referendum, its exit from the eurozone and then the euro’s plunge and the yen’s upsurge.”
A strong yen is negative for Japanese exporters as it makes products costlier overseas and erodes their profits when repatriated.
