With a background of a weaker yen, Japanese shipbuilders are happy with explodingly increasing newbuilding orders which are concentrated mostly in bulkers.  
Trying to take advantage of the lowest level of ship prices in the past 30 years, foreign shipowners have proceeded to placing orders for high-efficient vessels for competitive prices that Japanese shipbuilders are said to have inked contracts for 49 export ships solely in March.  
This represents 10 times the five vessels newly ordered in February and also the large monthly new order record after the global economic crisis. Particularly, 35 vessels out of 49 are ordered from foreign shipowners.
Among new contracts in March, only 2% of them were contracted in yens and the rest of 98% were signed for dollar denominated.. In the contracts, there are orders for 17 capesize bulkers, 16 handymaxes, 8 panamax bulkers, five handysize bulkers and etc. that bulker was a predominating vessel type in the new contracts as ordered for 46 vessels.
In February, Japanese builders won orders for three handymax bulkers, one post-panamax bulker and one handysize bulker and US dollar denominated deals accounted for 79% of all.
Shipbuilders of Japan have shown a considerably high competitiveness in ship prices as greatly narrowing gaps from Chinese shipbuilders amid a remarkably weaker yen.
On the other hand, China’s yuan is getting stronger comparing with the US dollar, resulting in worsening profitability of Chinese shipbuilders. Many of shipowners are heading for Japanese builders in an attempt to construct high-quality vessels and put them on resale for higher prices.
Back in 2011, Japanese shipbuilders suggested $37m-$38m for a newbuilding supramax bulker while China offered only $31m for the same vessel type. However, in the background of declined ship prices and a weaker yen, Japan now offers $27m-$28m while China, $25-$26m for the same vessel type.
Furthermore, Japan’s policy finance institutions are helpful to domestic shipbuilders’ winning orders with its support measures to provide a ship fund up to 80% of ship prices with an interest rate down to 1%, depending on their projects.
However, Japanese shipbuilding industry is said that it is still too early to talk about a revival of domestic shipbuilding industry only with a weak yen situation since an oversupply of tonnage is still ongoing in the global shipbuilding market and new orders are recorded to be historically low.