TOKYO: Japan's economy shrank by an annualised 3.7 percent in January-March, marking the second consecutive quarter of contraction as the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit, government data showed Thursday.
Two quarterly falls in GDP are seen as a technical recession.
The contraction was much more severe than the 2.0 percent drop forecast in a Dow Jones Newswires poll of analysts and was the first successive contraction since the 2008 financial crisis.
It was the steepest fall since a record 18.3 percent contraction in January March 2009.
Gross domestic product fell 0.9 percent on a quarter to quarter basis, government data showed.
Before Japan was hit by its biggest recorded earthquake and the tsunami it spawned, some analysts had predicted that the nation's economy would return to growth in the first quarter on the back of rising overseas demand.
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