The first is raising capital from foreign investors for cash-strapped Japanese firms. (For example, Japanese banks have issued lots of securities to bolster their depleted capital.) The second is the trickle of privatisations and new issues.

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With capital insufficient to support their assets, Japanese banks have almost stopped lending at home.

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The traditional shipping financiers are therefore pulling in their horns especially Japanese banks, which are also struggling to meet international capital-adequacy requirements.

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Against this, American banks will complain that some other regulators, notably the Germans and Japanese, are being allowed special treatment that lets their banks set aside less capital for similar risks.

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Today Japanese banks are trying to shore up crumbling balance sheets instead of providing new capital.

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Yet they provide a grim commentary on the paltry results of the efforts that Japanese banks claim to have made over the past few years to rebuild their capital and write off their substantial bad debts.

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Against that, though, new capital-adequacy rules due to take effect in 2006-07 will force Japanese banks to sell more of their holdings.

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The marriages and write-offs by Japanese institutions highlight a key plank in the strategies of topnotch Asian banks: Beef up your capital.

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Indeed anyone who bought silver since March 18 when the central banks engaged in coordinated intervention to stem the rising Japanese yen, is not only under water facing capital losses, it is also costing them much more to remain long.

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