MARINA KAMIMURA, CNN TOKYO BUREAU CHIEF: Japan's economy at that point in time was clearly not in good shape. The unemployment rate was heading straight up. Companies, particularly smaller ones, were going bankrupt left and right.</s>KAMIMURA (voice-over): Consumers here have known it for months, so too has corporate Japan. Whether the government uses the so-called "R" word or not, it is now official: Japan is in a recession.</s>ROBERT FELDMAN, MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER: It's the combination of the very weak business investment number and the failure of the consumer to cut back that really tipped these numbers in the wrong direction.</s>KAMIMURA: What those numbers also show is that the world's second largest economy shrank last fiscal year, the first time that's happened since the oil crisis. The fact Japan's economy is in such rough shape comes as no surprise to international investors. They've been beating down the end for days now, to levels they say more realistically reflect the true shape of the economy. And with the yen continuing its downward path, the other huge concern is what that means for the rest of Asia. The region was counting on a strong Japan to pull it out of its currency crisis.</s>KAMIMURA: Until this new batch of economic data is released in June, we won't know for sure if Japan is completely out of this last recession, the fourth in the 1990s for Japan.
CNN 20: Japanese Recession, June 13, 1998