Japan Stocks Slip, With Nintendo Giving Back After Recent Rally

Japanese stocks started Friday flat but soon deflated mildly, with both the Nikkei Stock Average and Topix down 0.2% apiece. With the dollar changing hands for �120.76, almost exactly where it was a day earlier, the major tech and industrial names were a mixed bag, with Sony Corp. up 0.2%, and Panasonic Corp. rising 0.4%, while Hitachi Ltd. lost 0.5%, and Kyocera Corp. fell 0.4%. Shares of Nintendo Co. surrendered 2.9%, consolidating after soaring some 38% in the week to date on news of its plan to make mobile games. Toshiba Corp. rose 2.3%, meanwhile, as it announced commercial production of a 13-megapixel image sensor allowing smartphones and tablets to record HD video at a high frame rate. Financially troubled Skymark Airlines Inc. remained untraded 20 minutes into the session as a Nikkei news report said the carrier's liabilities were more than four times more than previously estimated. And Honda Motor Co. pulled back by a 0.4% after adding more than 100,000 vehicles to its U.S. recall due to faulty airbags.