According to the Cabinet Office, this was the first contraction for Japan in two quarters of real gross domestic product, which is the total of goods and services produced in a country and adjusted for inflation.
The Cabinet Office's preliminary data also showed there had been a decline in public investment in the recording period, and that personal consumption, which accounts for more than half of the nation's GDP, was essentially flat.
Economists here pointed out the lackluster figures were largely due to COVID-19 quasi-emergency measures being in place across the majority of regions in Japan during the quarter, in a bid to combat the spread of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The office also said that for 2021, the country's GDP that ended in March, increased 2.1 percent in real terms, marking the first time in three years Japan's GDP had entered positive territory.
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