However you cut it, this is not the shape of a recovery. Japanese core machinery orders plummeted to new lows in May; private sector orders, excluding volatile purchases such as ships or those from electric power companies, fell 3 per cent from April. That was the third consecutive monthly decline and took orders down to about $7bn, less than half the late 2007 peak.

If current forecasts for June are anywhere near the mark, Japan will have notched up five sequential quarters of decline. This is due to more than evaporating demand from overseas. Orders from manufacturers, which tend to focus on exports, rose in May from the previous month. By contrast, orders from non-manufacturers, a category including construction and telecommunications and a proxy for domestic demand, fell 7 per cent. This suggests excess capacity, the scourge of Japan’s last crisis. Indeed, the world’s second-biggest economy has an output gap, on the government’s reckoning, in excess of 8 per cent.