TOKYO, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei average crawled up 0.6 percent on Friday as more encouraging data reassured investors about the state of the global economic recovery and sparked short-covering.
But gains were capped by wariness ahead of closely-watched U.S. August non-farm payrolls data later on Friday, as well as investor concern about whether the recent rush of upbeat indicators signals a true recovery or not.
The benchmark Nikkei added 51.29 points to 9,114.13, after rising as high as 9,141.09. It was up 1.4 percent on the week, its biggest weekly gain in nearly two months.
It has recovered about 3 percent so far this month following a 7.5 percent slide in August.
The broader Topix gained 0.5 percent to 823.70. (Reporting by Aiko Hayashi; Editing by Joseph Radford)