Japanese stocks rise, as do unemployment and inflation

Japan's stock market decoupled today from yesterday's poor US market performance. Bloomberg reports:

Japanese stocks rose, capping the biggest weekly gain in more than a month, carried by a rally in property and commodity-related companies...

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose 215.89, or 1.7 percent, to close at 12,820.47, bringing this week's gain to 2.7 percent, the most since Feb. 15. The broader Topix climbed 17.37, or 1.4 percent, to 1,243.81 after falling as much as 0.9 percent in the morning session. The index remains 27 percent lower for the business year that started April 1, 2007.

The gain occurred despite economic reports today that were generally disappointing. From AFP/CNA:

The jobless rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 3.9 percent in February from the previous month, the government reported, missing market forecasts for a steady rate of 3.8 percent.

Japan's core inflation rate meanwhile accelerated to a year-on-year rate of 1.0 percent in February, the quickest pace since March 1998, as rising energy and food costs drove up consumer prices, a separate report showed.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, picked up from a pace of 0.8 percent in January...

Japanese household spending was flat in February as average incomes dipped 0.1 percent, the government said...

Retail sales rose 3.1 percent in February from a year ago, but that was at least partly due to the effect of higher gasoline prices, the government said.

Not so much decoupling there, unfortunately.