After picking up recent news to serve as a reference in predicting Japan economy of 2018, an opinion of the economy expansion looks the majority. 

Bank of Japan TANKAN (December 15 announcement)

• The diffusion index (DI) of a big company, the manufacturing industry is improved for +25, five consecutive quarters.
• Business perception improvement of material, the resources industry by growth of the export with a global economic expansion and the recovery of the product market conditions pushed up an index.
•  I see bottoming out of the sales price of the company and expect that corporate earnings look up more (Nobuyuki Kashiwara, Asset Management One Chief Global Strategist)

Economy expansion, 2018 too and are the longest after the war

• It is more likely to update the longest economy expansion after the war in January 2019.  (Tsuyoshi Kokubu, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc.  President)

Domestic economy "expansion" a half year later is 80%, 100 president questionnaires

• The management to consider expnasion of the present conditions of the domestic economy reaches approximately 90% and improves for 6 consecutive quarters.
• 26.7% of managers expect to exceed in comparison with 2017, the total sum of the capital spending in 2018.

In addition, as for the second real GDP growth rate of the third-quarter announced on December 8, 2017, it was growth by 0.6% compared with the second-quarter, annual ratio conversion for 2.5% increase and seven consecutive quarters.

Furthermore, by the opinion survey by company for the economic outlook of 2018 by Teikoku Databank, companies to foresee the expansion about the future of the economy from one year ago increase. On the other hand, for a concern, a labor shortage, crude oil, material price hike, the consumption taxation system are noted.

Although we have the difference of temperature by the industry, a fair wind seems to continue for Japanese economy.