FEARS "OVERHEATING" OF JAPANESE ECONOMY
In an Economic White Paper issued at the end of July, the Japanese government asserted that the recession in Japan has come to. an end and the "economy has finally entered. the stage of recov— ery a
Two weeks later Prime Minister Eisaku Sato told a press conference that there was already a need to watch out against "overheating" the economy , although only the 80% mark has been reached in the recovery. :
A number of indexes bear out the government ' s assertion ‘that the recession has ended, one of the main ones being production. For the mining and manufacturing industries the production index increased steadily by 3.7% from January to March and by 4.8% from April to June. Department sales were also up in July in contrast to a decline for the same period in 1965.
The stock market, however, has not yet recovered; and the. number of bankruptcies.is still high although the rate is declining.
As for inflation, it continued throughout the recession and the government did little about it. Thus in 1965 prices for con- ~.gumers goods rose 7.4% and during the first six months of this year they rose 5.5%.