The Bank of Japan kept its economic assessment of six of the country's nine regions level on Monday but downgraded Tokai, where Toyota Motor Corp. and its suppliers are based, as the yen's appreciation weighed on export-oriented manufacturers.
"The Tokai region revised its assessment downward, reporting that private consumption had shown relatively weak developments in some indicators," the quarterly report said.
The central bank meanwhile upgraded the Chugoku and Kyushu-Okinawa regions, describing their economies as recovering from the big earthquakes that struck the southwest earlier this year.