The destruction wrought by the Great East Japan Earthquake has started to appear in statistics in its full force.
New car sales in April fell 47.3 percent from a year ago to 185,673 units, while gross domestic product for the January-March quarter contracted 0.9 percent from the previous quarter, representing an annualized fall of 3.7 percent.
The economy was in fact growing from January up to early March, but the huge impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in the remaining weeks of the month pushed the whole quarter's growth into negative territory.
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