Microsoft Japan today announced the postponement of the Japanese release of Internet Explorer 9 to an unspecified future date. In a press release, Microsoft Japan pointed to the recent earthquake as being one of their reasons for the delay, as well as an effort to reduce the load on network bandwidth at such a critical time. Internet Explorer 9 is set to bring a wave of new features to Microsoft's browser, including HTML5 and CSS3 improvements, an updated interface, improved JavaScript performance, and many other improvements. Originally, the browser had been scheduled to go live at 1PM on March 15th in Japanese time, but the company halted their plans with just hours to go. Microsoft extend their sympathies to those effected by the earthquake in Tōhoku and hope to be able to recover as quickly as possible.