The increase is mostly due to the fact that last February was especially brutal for the island nation, as exports fell by a record 49 percent during the height of the global financial crisis. The gains in February nevertheless signaled to economists that the Japanese economy—the second-biggest in the world—is in a sustainable recovery phase.
Key to Japan’s recovery is its exports to other Asian nations, especially China, which increased by almost 56 percent last month.
“We don’t have to worry anymore about the risk of Japan slipping back into a recession,” Kato, an economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo, said in a Bloomberg report.
