Is this another annus horribilis for Akio Toyoda? As president of Toyota Motor, he now has to oversee its biggest single vehicle recall to date of 7.4m vehicles because of a faulty window switch. That comes against a backdrop of falling sales in China, where tensions over islands in the East China Sea have crimped the country’s appetite for Japanese cars.

Even so, remember that the litmus test for recall costs goes something like this: is anyone dead or severely injured? Are the parts in question expensive to replace? Is this a labour-intensive exercise? The answer is no on all counts. As a result, assuming Y1,000 per car for parts and Y2,000 on labour, this round of recalls could cost Toyota a maximum of Y30bn ($380m), according to Credit Suisse estimates. That is barely 1 per cent of average annual operating costs.

The fallout in China, however, is a bigger problem for Toyota. Its sales there halved from a year earlier in September. This was a steeper decline than for Japanese peers as the car giant is the marque that most symbolises Japan. But then only one-tenth of Toyota’s global unit sales are in China, compared with more than a quarter for Nissan.