The Tokyo equities markets declined on Monday, with the Nikkei 225 ending down by 0.6 percent to 17,456.58 and the Topix index closing at 1,777.34, 0.4 percent lower.
Domestic stocks fell victim to profit-taking. The real estate sector saw big losses as some analysts have begun to believe that shares in properties companies have become overvalued. Mitsui Fudosan and Mitsubishi Estate each lost 2 percent on the day, to ¥2,630 and ¥2,655 respectively.
Paper and pulp lost 1.4 percent as a sector. Oji Paper dropped 2.6 percent to ¥717, while Nippon Paper was down 1.3 per cent to ¥513,000.
Banks were mostly down, with the world’s biggest bank as determined by assets, Mitsubishi UFJ, losing 0.5 percent to ¥1,920,000
In the securities sector, one of the largest houses, Daiwa, declined by 1 percent to ¥1,599.
Companies that depend on exports were also down as investors worried about the possibility of interest rate hikes in the United States. In the electronics sector, Hitachi lost 1.1 percent to ¥876. Toshiba was down by the same percentage to ¥747.
Not all companies saw losses on the day, however. Upstream oil and gas company Inpex added 6 percent to ¥1,230,000 after it said it would invest in liquid natural gas facilities in Australia. In the restaurants sector, Yoshinoya D&C was up 2.9 percent to ¥215,000 on an upgraded earnings forecast for the 2006/2007 fiscal year.