On February 15th, preliminary figures released by Japan’s cabinet office revealed that GDP shrank for the second straight quarter meaning Japan is in a technical recession but more importantly, Japan’s economy slipped from third to fourth largest in the world.
Below are some takes on the situation from around the mainstream media with some possible good news nearer the end of the article.
Paul Jackson of Bloomberg reports that the newest GDP data complicates the BOJ’s plan to raise rates in near term but cautions on betting too confidently that rates will stay where they are until late 2024.
Two NHK World pieces below outline more detail for the layman on what these numbers mean for the nation.
The first video features Kanda Keiji, Senior Economist at Daiwa Institute of Research, one of the few economists who accurately predicted this most recent contraction.
Click above image to watch the report on YouTube. NHK World doesn't allow YouTube playback on other websites.
The second video features more detailed insight from NHK’s senior economic commentator Sakurai Reiko who says that while Japan’s shrinking demographic is one factor contributing to this result, it isn’t the whole story as Germany’s population is still currently one-third of Japan’s.
She goes further to say anemic wage growth over the last twenty years is also playing a factor.
Click above image to watch the report on YouTube. NHK World doesn't allow YouTube playback on other websites.
The Better News…
As a sort of conciliatory prize, on February 16th, the Nikkei Asia reported that while Japan's nominal GDP fell below Germany's, the nation’s growth rate outpaced China's for the first time in nearly 50 years.
Full article here (open link with a private browser if you hit the paywall).
Other Japanophile pundits remarked in the comments section across various outlets that Japan has a habit of revising economic data upward so these headlines do have a chance of being nullified in the month’s ahead.