Tokyo Stock Mart Has Worst Drop, Falls 345

Tokyo’s stock market suffered its biggest single-day decline in history today, with the Nikkei Dow Jones index dropping 345.45 points.

Several brokers blamed the slide in part on jitters stemming from Japan’s economic frictions with the United States and Common Market.

They said that a 150-point decline in the first hour of trading intensified general market jitters and that selling snowballed. Today’s slide broke a mark set on Sept. 28, 1981, when the market dropped 302.84 points.

Before the average started edging up toward the last half-hour of trading, the Nikkei Dow Jones average had plunged 405.80 points. It finally settled at 12,207.28 at the bell.

Rumors of a sell-off here by European investors were not verified, but one analyst said even rumors could upset the market.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was quoted as saying today that he will stick to his tight fiscal policies, which the United States claims is contributing to Japan’s trade feud with the West.

Nakasone is under pressure to abandon his policy of fiscal austerity and stimulate domestic demand as a means of increasing imports and shifting manufacturers away from their heavy reliance on export markets.