Tokyo shares rose for a third successive session on Thursday, boosted by a broadly weaker yen and another oil price surge, though Mitsubishi Motors collapsed 20 percent after it admitted falsifying fuel efficiency tests. The crisis-hit company's testing was manipulated to make hundreds of thousands of cars appear more fuel-efficient than they were, it said Wednesday.
The rigged figures were discovered after Japan's number-two automaker Nissan found inconsistencies in the testing data and reported it. Mitsubishi makes some cars for Nissan.
On Thursday, Japanese transport officials raided Mitsubishi's research centre in central Nagoya city. The firm's shares, which were untraded during the day owing to an overwhelming number of sell orders, plunged 20.46 percent to 583 yen, following a 15 percent collapse Wednesday. The two days of losses wiped $2.5 billion off its value.
But the benchmark Nikkei 225 index soared 2.70 percent, or 457.08 points, to 17,363.62, while the broader Topix index of all first-section shares rose 2.04 percent, or 27.90 points, to 1,393.68.
Exporters rallied as the yen, considered a safe investment in times of trouble, retreated on the back of a generally positive outlook across world markets.
"Since the beginning of this week, with the recovery in global sentiment, the yen has tended to depreciate to nearly 110," Hirofumi Suzuki, a Singapore-based economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, told Bloomberg News.
Other automakers rose. Nissan surged 3.14 percent to 1,048 yen and Toyota jumped 3.20 percent to 5,824 yen. Honda added 2.13 percent to 3,115 yen despite announcing it was extending a production halt at its factory in earthquake-hit Kumamoto prefecture by at least six days.
Uniqlo fashion house operator Fast Retailing, a market heavyweight, soared 4.97 percent to 30,890 yen.