E.  Japan’s economy and the automobile industry  As I mentioned, automobile production has continued to drop sharply: the number of passenger cars produced in April marked a year-on-year decline of 60.2 percent and automobile-related real exports a decline of 46.0 percent for the same month.
This significant drop in production and exports in the automobile industry has played a large part in the recent substantial downturn in Japan’s economy. Industrial production in March fell 15.5 percent from the previous month.