U.S. buyout firm KKR & Co is no longer in the bidding to buy Takata Corp, the Japanese parts maker at the center of the world's biggest auto recall, according to a person briefed on the bidding process. KKR did not attend meetings last week between bidders and the carmakers key to Takata's survival, the source told Reuters. The four other bidding groups include Bain Capital, a U.S. buyout firm that teamed up with Japanese chemical maker Daicel Corp, sources have said.

In a fresh sign of the economic fallout from weaker global trade, Japan’s three largest shipping companies agreed on Monday to merge a major portion of their businesses, saying they needed to join forces to survive, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The president of one of the companies, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, said the groups faced bleak prospects on their own.

Parliament passed an extra spending package Tuesday to get Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic-revival plan back on track, but the Japanese leader is already facing calls to do more, The Wall Street Journal reported. A leading Abe adviser and some economists say the Bank of Japan is essentially offering unlimited funds to the government interest-free, and he shouldn’t let the opportunity pass. Opponents of ramping up such borrowing say that issuing more debt to finance more stimulus could send a signal that the nation has lost its fiscal discipline.

A sleepy, former coal-mining town in northern Japan is taking unprecedented measures to combat its biggest challenge: a devastating shrinking of its population, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Since its peak in the post-war economic boom of the 1960s, the population of Yubari, a little more than an hour’s drive east of Sapporo on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, has declined by more than 90 percent to just 9,000 as older residents died and young people moved away to bigger cities. Ten years ago, it became Japan’s first municipality to declare bankruptcy.

The Bank of Japan plunged into an approach to monetary policy unseen in decades, introducing a target for 10-year interest rates in its latest bid to restart economic growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Japanese central bank, which has struggled for nearly two decades to bring about steady inflation, said Wednesday it wants to keep the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds at zero, and will adjust the pace of its bond buying as needed to achieve that.

Shares in Takata fell 12 per cent on Tuesday as investors feared that a bankruptcy option could be part of the restructuring package being compiled for the Japanese manufacturer at the centre of a global safety scandal, the Financial Times reported. The sharp sell-off on Tuesday followed a report by Bloomberg that several bidders for Takata have not ruled out some form of bankruptcy proceedings to mitigate the liabilities.

Japan’s central bank is reviewing its economic policies, asking why they have failed to kick-start growth, as intended. Its much-anticipated report is due on Wednesday, the International New York Times reported. One target is negative interest rates — an unconventional tactic adopted in Japan and Europe that turns the usual rules of borrowing and lending upside down. What are negative interest rates? Negative interest rates mean depositors pay money to save their money, a reversal of the normal rules of economics. In this case, the depositors are banks.

The world’s leading experiment in monetary easing is floundering, and its engineers are divided over how to get it on track, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Japan has tried radical measures for 3½ years to reflate the country’s sagging economy, resorting this year to negative interest rates. Growth and inflation remain elusive. Now the bank’s board, while still in favor of easing, has some members wanting to revise the methods for doing so—likely sparking uncertainty for economy-watchers and worries for investors.

Some analysts expect the Bank of Japan to fire another blast of monetary stimulus at the end of its two-day policy meeting on Sept. 21. Others see a central bank with little if any ammunition left -- or one turned gun-shy, Bloomberg News reported. For some economists, the BOJ’s decision to undertake a comprehensive review of its easing program to be concluded at the meeting underscored its struggle to hit the 2 percent inflation target, and bolstered arguments that it had reached the limits of its powers.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda signaled his readiness to ease monetary policy further using existing or new tools, shrugging off growing market concerns that the bank is reaching its limits after an already massive stimulus program, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. He also stressed the BOJ's comprehensive assessment of its policies later this month won't lead to a withdrawal of easing.