The Cabinet Office released corrected economic data, saying the economy in nominal terms, prior to adjustment for inflation, contracted 0.1 percent in the final quarter of 2012 and not the previously announced figure of a 0.3 percent contraction.
The corrections announced Tuesday for nominal gross domestic product and other figures were necessary because of miscalculations of nominal trade data.
The annualized contraction of GDP, the total value of goods and services produced domestically, was corrected from a nominal 1.3 percent to 0.5 percent.
The office started checking the data after being informed by an economist of the possibility of a mistake.