Japan' s textile and apparel consumption growth held back

Although Japan' s GDP in 2021 has not been announced yet, from the growth data of GDP in the first three quarters of last year and previous years, it will still be around 5 trillion USD.

Since the Japan Heisei foam in the 1990s, Japan' s economic development has stagnated, and Japan' s GDP now makes few departures from that of 20 years ago. Coupled with the aging society, late marriage, low fertility rate, low desire and other problems, this period is also known as the "lost three decades" of the Japanese economy.

From the perspective of textile and apparel consumption, because textiles and apparel are durable goods and optional consumer goods, it performs particularly bleak under the ideological trend of "low desire and no consumption" among Japanese young people.

Total wholesale and retail sales of Japan' s clothes and decoration has declined in the past 20 years, and Japanese consumption has been greatly weakened after the 2008 financial crisis. The clothes and decoration wholesale and retail sales index fell below 100 in 2016, which is obviously separated from the total index.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Japanese government launched measures to stimulate the economy, accompanied by ultra-loose monetary policy. Wholesale and retail sales in Japan rebounded up, but consumption of clothes and decoration remained weak.

The depressed consumption of textile and apparel in Japan naturally affected the import of textiles and apparel. According to the latest data, Japan' s textile and apparel imports last year were 3646.3 billion yen, down 4.7% from the same period last year and 9.5% from 2019, of which apparel imports were 2602.9 billion yen, up 2.2% from the same period last year, but still 14.4% lower than in 2019.

Imports value of Japan' s textile and apparel from China accounted for more than half of the total and it reached 2120.4 billion yen in 2021, down 4.8% from the same period last year and 7.5% from 2019. The imports from China were 1519.1 billion yen, up 7.2% year-on-year but down 12.1% compared with that in 2019.