LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The dollar briefly rose above 113 yen on Thursday, having earlier fallen below 111 yen, with dealers speculating that Japan was directly intervening to weaken the currency after an almost 10 percent surge since late January.

There was no evidence that intervention had taken place, and one dealer said trading volumes were too low to suggest it had.

“The volumes in that spike were less than 1 million per tick so there is no evidence in that of an official bid,” said a trader with an Asia-focused bank.

Japanese markets were closed for a holiday.

Having earlier touched 110.985 yen, its weakest against the Japanese currency since October 2014, the dollar gained nearly 2 yen in the space of around two minutes, before retreating to 112.20 yen. That still left it down around 1 percent on the day.

“There has obviously been lots of speculation of the chances of intervention building over the last couple of days,” said a strategist with a Japanese bank in London. “They are going to have a hard time justifying it internationally. At levels above 110 from a historical perspective the yen is still cheap.”

The last time Japan intervened to weaken the yen was in October 2011, when the dollar touched a record low of 75.31 yen, before being pushed back up past 79 yen by the intervention. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly and Patrick Graham, editing by Nigel Stephenson)