Tokyo stocks open lower as investors take profits

Tokyo stocks opened lower on Monday following declines on Wall Street, while investors took profits following a recent rally and a stronger yen weighed on demand.

The dollar declined against the yen on tensions between the United States and China over an unmanned US sea survey probe the Pentagon said Friday was seized by Beijing in international waters in the South China Sea.

China said it would return the monitoring device though the situation was complicated by a tweet on Saturday from US President-elect Donald Trump saying Beijing could "keep it!".

The dollar was quoted at 117.69 yen in early Tokyo trade, after it fell to the upper 117-yen range in New York from 118.20 yen in Tokyo late Friday.

The dollar's tumble against the Japanese currency Friday was "a timely reminder that the yen remains the preeminent safe haven currency," Ray Attrill, global head of foreign exchange at National Australia Bank, said in a note.

Investors are also watching a two-day Bank of Japan policy meeting starting Monday, though market consensus is there will be no change in the central bank's current easing policy, analysts said.

"To continue the current policy means... the move may prompt depreciation of the yen," Okasan Securities said in a commentary.

The yen has slid against the dollar since Trump's election last month on expectations he will pursue a growth policy based on infrastructure spending and deregulation.

The outlook next year for more rate increases by the US Federal Reserve, which hiked its key rate last week, has also pushed the yen lower on the prospect for higher US yields.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index, which closed at a fresh one-year high on Friday, lost 0.29 percent, or 55.31 points, to 19,345.84 in the first few minutes of trade.

The broader Topix index of all first-section shares was down 0.21 percent, or 3.32 points, at 1,547.35.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the broad-based S&P 500 and the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index all declined on Friday in New York.

Separately, dealers shrugged off Japan's latest trade data released 10 minutes before the opening bell, which showed a surplus of 152.5 billion yen ($1.3 billion) in November, the third consecutive month the figure was in the black.

Among individual stocks, Nintendo dropped 4.52 percent to 25,210 yen in early trade, after the shares dived Friday following the release of its Super Mario Run mobile phone game despite the app topping download charts.

Softbank was down 0.20 percent at 7,815 yen while Toyota declined 0.32 percent at 7,132 yen in early trade.

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