Japan's latest recession lasted for 19 months through May last year when the economy was experiencing the worst slump on record due to the initial impact of the coronavirus pandemic, a government panel concluded Tuesday.
A Cabinet Office panel of economists, which retrospectively determines the length of an economic growth and contraction, said in its provisional assessment that the latest shrinkage of the world's third-largest economy started in November 2018 when its exports bore the brunt of an escalating U.S.-China tariff war.
In the April to June period of 2020, the Japanese economy contracted an annualized nearly 30% from the previous quarter, the sharpest such shrinkage on record, as the government's first state of emergency declaration over the virus spread covered the whole nation for about a month from mid-April.