At a press conference today, Abe also announced that he would dissolve the lower house on Nov. 21 and decided to postpone the second round sales tax hike by 18 months.

　　Japan's economy has shrunk in each of the two quarters since April when the sales tax was hiked from 5 to 8 percent. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth officially puts Japan's economy in recession.

　　日本首相呼吁提前举行大选Abe said that Japan's economy has yet to return to the path of recovery and the first round sales tax hike had an adverse impact on economic growth.

　　He added that Japan will craft an extra budget in the current fiscal year to boost consumption.

　　For more on this, I earlier spoke with He Weiwen, Senior Fellow of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University.