Rising again?

Japan may at last be seeing glimpses of a rising sun after an enormously long night and an ensuing slow and gloomy dawn.

A Bank of Japan June 2004 survey revealed that the country's small and medium manufacturing sectors had attained a positive domestic growth index (DI) of 2.0 for the first time in twelve years (since the end of the “Bubble Economy"). Many predicted this was a truer sign of recovery than Japan's major manufacturing industries' continuing strong performance, marking increases during the consecutive five months of the year, and more recently attaining a positive DI of 2.2. And unemployment has been checked, now running below the psychological 5% level. However, a skeptic would observe that the prevailing economic climate was not gracing grassroots, mom-and-pop enterprises with fewer employees. Japan's automobile manufacturing and automobile-related industries and services are made up of corporate entities and private enterprises, employing 5.07 million people, or 7.9% of the country's total workforce of 64.32 million.

Be that as it may, the Japanese automobile industry as a whole is on a steady course. The 2003 statistics show increases in domestic production, domestic sales, export, and overseas production; unit volumes are 10.286, 5.09, 4.756, and 8.607 million, respectively. These numbers do not include two-wheelers, which have been decreasing in volume for years, except in overseas production, indicating a marked shift in demand in developed regions.