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Japanese stocks plunged on Friday, hitting their lowest levels since August as market fears over a global recession intensified following U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement. The Nikkei 225 fell 2.6% to 33,818.18 as of 0230 GMT, putting it on track for a 9% weekly decline—its sharpest since March 2020. The broader Topix index dropped 3.5% to 2,477.96, eyeing a 10% weekly loss.
The selloff followed a brutal session on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 saw one of its worst single-day losses in years, wiping out $2.4 trillion in market value. Investor sentiment soured rapidly after Trump introduced the steepest U.S. trade barriers in over a century, pushing traders toward safe-haven assets like the Japanese yen—adding further pressure on export-heavy Japanese equities.
Hiroyuki Ueno, chief strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management, noted that investors shifted to a risk-off mode, aggressively selling holdings. On Friday, 28 of the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s 33 industry sub-indexes were in the red, with bank stocks taking the hardest hit. The banking sector fell 10% in a single session and is heading for a record 20% weekly drop.
Bank shares, once favored on expectations of rising interest rates, are now under pressure as concerns mount that the Bank of Japan may delay policy tightening. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group shares plunged 10.3%, marking their worst day since August.
Meanwhile, defensive domestic stocks gained. Real estate firm Mitsui Fudosan climbed 5%, and East Japan Railway rose 3.8%. BOJ Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida reiterated that rate hikes remain on the table, but the central bank is closely watching the fallout from higher U.S. tariffs.
