Musings on Japan's industrial economic performance

Over at Japan Economy Watch, Edward Hugh has been supplying readers with copious amounts of data on the performance of the Japanese economy. Recently, he provides us with a chart of Japan's industrial production index for the last couple of years:
Just eyeballing the trend line for the last six months of the industrial production index shows essentially a flatline to me. One could make an argument that on a per capita basis these results aren't too bad since due to Japan's demographics output doesn't necessarily have show positive growth to maintain standard of living for a growing population.

Interestingly, the industrial production index hovered around the 108 mark for the first seven months of 2007 and then the trendline I mentioned above is at about 111; coincidentally jumping up to that level in the same month that the credit crunch hit the USA in full force. I wonder what connection there might be.