Cargo shippers reported that major Japanese ports were closed, though the shutdowns may be precautionary. The country’s major seaports, most of them south of Tokyo, play a crucial role in Japan’s export-driven economy. Japanese exports — chiefly automobiles, machinery and manufactured goods — rose by almost 25 percent in 2010, the first increase in three years, and a lengthy shutdown could create costly delays up and down the global supply chain. Several airports, including Tokyo’s Narita, had been closed.  Carl Weinberg, chief economist at the New York-based research firm, High Frequency Economics, said the damage to the world’s third-largest economy would have consequences beyond Japan’s shores.  “There is no way to assess even the direct damage to Japan’s economy, or to the global economy, that this will cause,” Mr. Weinberg said. Damage in Japan “will impact the people and businesses to whom money is owed, regardless of where they may be — in Japan or in New York City.”  The Japanese central bank said on its Web site that it would continue to assess any possible fallout on financial operations, and stood “ready to take action as necessary.”  Over all though, the bulk of industrial Japan appeared to have been spared, said an economist in Hong Kong, who had been in touch with his colleagues in Japan but asked not to be identified as he was not authorized by his bank to talk about Japan.  One concern was the Cosmo Oil refinery near Tokyo, which had been burning out of control with 100-foot flames whipping into the sky, according to media reports. At least four refineries capable of refining 950,000 barrels a day have suffered damages or are not fully functioning, but experts say it is hard to know how long they will be out.  Many power generating operations reported disruptions and several nuclear power stations were shut down. The Japanese government declared an “atomic power emergency” at a nuclear plant in northern Japan and evacuated nearby residents. No radiation leaks had been reported and officials described the evacuation as precautionary.  Automakers reported damage to some factories and offices, and Honda said one employee was killed at a research and development center in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, when a wall collapsed.  More than 30 Honda employees and 2 Nissan employees in Tochigi were injured. Honda’s assembly plant in Sayama will be closed through Monday, but a plant in Suzuka remained open. Nissan has suspended operations in Japan through at least Sunday.  Toyota, which reported no casualties, said its Japanese plants had resumed production after a brief stoppage but that four subsidiary plants were closed while their workers were evacuated.  All three companies build a large percentage of the vehicles they sell to American customers in the United States, though some parts are exported from Japan.  Honda and Nissan said they did not anticipate any immediate effects on their North American businesses. Honda, in a statement, said the “vast majority of our parts for these operations are produced in America as well,” but that it needed to assess any long-term effects.  The popular Toyota Prius hybrid car is built only in Japan, and some Corolla compact cars come from Japan, though it also is assembled in Canada.  A representative for Sony, based in Tokyo, said the company had shut down its six northern plants, which make Lithium-ion batteries and Blu-Ray parts.  Other companies, including Fuji Heavy Industries, Bridgestone and several steel mills, reported production halts, while Reuters said that the electronics company, Fujitsu, reported some damage to a facility.  In a statement, Joe Adachi, chief executive of Canon U.S.A., said there had “been a limited amount of injuries at our Utsunomiya Office, located in Tochigi prefecture, and there has been a limited amount of damage to our facilities.”  Initial reports, however, suggested that Tokyo, the financial center, had not been badly damaged.  “We have 1,800 employees in Tokyo, and they were all safely evacuated. Our initial assessment of our buildings in Tokyo reveals only minor damage. There has also been no damage to the Firm’s local data centers,” two Morgan Stanley senior executives, James P. Gorman and Paul J. Taubman, wrote in a note to employees.  In a note to employees, senior management at Credit Suisse said no injuries had been reported among its employees and that “damage to our Tokyo offices is superficial.” Goldman Sachs also reported no injuries among its employees.  The firms, however, said that were still assessing the situation and things could change.  Pat Sloan at the Omnicom Group advertising company, said “People were in the offices when it happened. Some managed to get home but some still are in their offices as transportation is difficult.”  Miyagi, the prefecture that is home to Sendai and the areas most affected by the quake, accounts for 1.7 percent of the Japanese population and the same proportion of gross domestic product, while the region of Tohoku as a whole is about 8 percent of G.D.P., Richard Jerram, chief Asia economist at Macquarie, wrote in a research note.  “Inevitably there will be microeconomic disruptions, as there were after Kobe and even Chuetsu,” Mr. Jerram wrote, referring to other powerful earthquakes that had hit Japan in recent years. “However, many firms reportedly diversified supply chains in the wake of Kobe, so the impact should be lower.”  The region hit by the tsunami is known for growing rice, and other rice-growing areas around the Pacific Rim may see coastal flooding at a time of already rising world food prices.  Ben Savage, the managing director for rice at Jackson Son & Company in London, one of the world’s oldest rice brokerage houses, said that the tsunami was unlikely to have much of an effect on global rice prices because rice tends to be fairly tolerant of the temporary ingress of salt water into paddies.  Christopher Gerteis, an expert in contemporary Japan at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London, said the region largely depended on local fisheries for their food, and that the cost of reconstruction would include reclaiming the fishing fleet.  Hiroko Tabuch, Sam Grobart, Keith Bradsher, Jad Mouawad, Susanne Craig, Stuart Elliott and Nick Bunkley contributed reporting.
As Japanese companies scrambled to assess the impact of the earthquake, the Japanese central bank said it would “do its utmost” to ensure market stability.