The transport ministry has ordered the nation's automakers to make further recalls of vehicles fitted with Takata Corp. air bag inflators of the kind being replaced in the United States, ministry officials said Tuesday.
The instruction made by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism could result in a recall of over 5 million units in Japan. This could push the cumulative number of domestic recalls to 20 million.
The move comes after the U.S. road safety regulator on May 4 ordered Takata to expand its recall to include all air bag inflators that use ammonium nitrate as propellant and lack a drying agent.
The additional order came on top of 28.8 million inflators already recalled in the United States, making the Takata inflator recall the largest product safety recall the U.S. auto industry has ever seen, it said.
The size of the auto parts supplier's global inflator recall is expected to reach over 100 million units.
The targeted air bag inflators are mainly used in front passenger seats. Japanese automakers are required to tell the transport ministry how they plan to tackle the recalls by May 20.
"It's a critically important safety issue so we will do everything we can," transport minister Keiichi Ishii told reporters Tuesday.
In the face of growing recall-linked costs, Takata cut its earnings outlook for fiscal 2015 on Monday. It now expects ¥13 billion in group net loss rather than ¥5 billion in profit projected earlier.
Takata and automakers such as Honda Motor Co. are expected to determine how much of the recall-related costs each should share.