ASIA STOCKS declined; Japan falls after Bank of Japan

Japanese stocks fell on Tuesday after the yen strengthened following the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting, while a decline in Samsung Electronics weighed on the South Korean market.

The dollar continued its march against a number of Asian currencies, after Standard & Poor’s upgraded its ratings outlook on the U.S. to stable from negative on Monday, citing the country’s strong economic performance.

The yen pushed back against the dollar after the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting disappointed the market, leaving policy unchanged. The Nikkei Average  fell 0.9%.

Softbank Corp.   fell 0.5% in Tokyo after the company agreed to raise its offer for Sprint Nextel Corp. to $21.6 billion from $20.1 billion previously.

South Korea’s Kospi Composite  declined 0.8%, with the index weighed by its single largest constituent, Samsung Electronics Co., which lost 2.9% on concerns that its Galaxy S4 smartphone may not be selling as well as expected.

Australia resumed trading after closing on Monday for a public holiday, getting its first chance to react to the events that influenced the previous session — namely, last week’s forecast-beating U.S. nonfarm payrolls data and disappointing Chinese economic data that came out over the weekend.

The S&P/ASX 200  was up 0.3%.

Markets in mainland China remained closed for a three-day public holiday, though Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong remained weighed by the poor economic data out over the weekend.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index was down 1.3% and the Hang Seng Index  was off 0.9%.

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