TOKYO, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo stocks closed sharply lower Monday, with the benchmark Nikkei stock index logging its biggest decline in 15 months as a sell-off late last week on Wall Street on inflation concerns triggered a risk averse mood.
The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average dropped 592.45 points, or 2.55 percent, from Friday to close the day at 22,682.08.
The broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, meanwhile, lost 40.46 points, or 2.17 percent, to finish at 1,823.74.
Market strategists here said that solid jobs figures announced in the U.S. late last week, coupled with 10-year Treasury yields rising sharply, triggered concerns about inflation in the world's largest economy, with market players rattled by the prospect of the U.S. Federal Reserve hiking its rates at a faster pace than expected.
Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities Co., said that the rising long-term interest rates sparked concern about the rate off acceleration of inflation in the U.S. and a slowdown in its economic growth.
Other market analysts said that Japanese stocks were dumped amid a global equities' rout following concerns that borrowing costs for companies, including Japanese firms, will increase if U.S. long-term bond yields continue to rise.
All industry categories retreated, with mining, nonferrous metal and machinery-linked issues comprising those that declined the most, and falling issues beat advancing ones by 1,930 to 118 on the First Section, with 17 ended the day unchanged.
On the main section on Monday, 1,881.89 million shares changed hands rising from Friday's volume of 1,702.44 million shares and the turnover on the first trading day of the week came to 3,567.1 billion yen (32.46 billion U.S. dollars).
