Oz: Japan's third biggest export market

Australia imported 37,367 Japanese-made motorcycles in 2011, ranking it third behind traditional heavyweights America (164,875) and France (39,541).

The figures are contained in a wide-ranging report called The Motor Industry of Japan 2012, which is a yearly overview of the activities of the Japanese automobile industry, with a broad range of data on motor vehicle production, new registrations, exports, global operations, etc. It also contains updates on current trends and developments in the industry.

Australia’s figure of 37,367 represents 7.4 percent of all of Japanese motorcycle exports, with its closest ‘competitors’ the Netherlands (35,687) and Italy (32,161).

Of the EU nations, Germany, Spain and the UK are also big importers of Japanese hardware, but after that there’s a huge gulf back to the likes of Sweden, Finland and Greece.

The Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Kenya are the key markets for Japan in Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa respectively, while Canada only represents a small proportion of the North American total.

Meanwhile, the report also says the number of motorcycles in use in Japan dipped to 12.48 million in March, 2012, down 1.6 percent from the previous year. Motorcycle use peaked at 18.2 million in 1985, and just five years later was down to 13 million. The figure has remained around that mark since.