On the domestic demand side, business fixed investment has been on a moderate increasing trend with corporate profits and business sentiment improving. According to the September 2017 Tankan (Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan), business fixed investment plans for fiscal 2017, especially those of large enterprises, showed firms' solid  2  stance.
This is evidenced by, for example, the fact that fixed investment on a basis close to GDP definition saw a year-on-year increase of 6.9 percent -- a level clearly exceeding the past average of 4.9 percent for the September Tankan surveys during the period of fiscal 2004-2016.