A big reason for the worsening of mood in Japan is that its banks, which have heretofore looked solid by global standards, are suddenly looking as if they too might need to raise capital. The reason? Japanese banks, a legacy of the zaibatsu days, hold substantial equity positions in other companies (note these stockholdings are much smaller than they were in the bubble years, when banks were important members of industrial groupings, later called keiretsu as the linkages weakened). The BIS, in a concession to this Japanese peculiarity, allowed a portion of the value of these shares to be counted towards regulatory capital requirements (forgive me for not checking the current rules, but it used to be 50%).