"Japan's policy will not change just because certain people outside of Japan made a comment," said Hiroshi Watanabe, director-general of the Ministry of Finance's International Bureau.

"We will change our policy whenever we think it is necessary," he added.

China, perhaps even more in the firing line for its alleged unfair currency and trading practices in a US election year, had a similar, simple message.

"We've seen the report," said an official at the People's Bank of China's press office.

"We will maintain our consistent monetary policy which is a unified, managed floating exchange rate regime," he said, referring to the yuan's pegged system against the dollar.

Up to now, the basic US charge against Japan, China and the Asian region generally is that these countries have intervened continually in the forex markets to keep their currencies weak and so boost exports unfairly.

The result has been a series of massive and growing trade surpluses with the United States combined with a mountain of reserves -- 741 billion dollars for Japan, 416 billion dollars for China, according to the latest figures.

Add to this some 200 billion dollars in Taiwan, another 112 billion dollars in Hong Kong and you get a figure near an astonishing 2.0 trillion dollars for the region as a whole at the end of January, up some 100 billion dollars in just a month, according to investment house UBS.