Amid Japan's Stock Rally, the Individual Investor Returns

Atsushi Moriyama, owner of a bookstore in the heart of Tokyo’s financial district, gauges the market by sales of the Kaisha Shikiho—in English, the Japan Company Handbook. Since December, the bible of Japanese stocks has been flying off the shelves at Yuhodo, his shop in the Kabuto neighborhood. “One look at the sales figures and you knew this rally was going to keep going,” he says.

The store is down to its last 30 copies of the 400 ordered for the quarter ended in January. The Shikiho’s publisher, Tokyo-based Toyo Keizai, says it’s run out of the latest edition, a sign that individual investors, many of whom grew up believing stocks only went down, are back. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average closed on Feb. 6 at its highest level since September 2008, after a 12-week rally that was the longest since 1959. From the start of the rally in November, the Nikkei is up 32 percent.