Tokyo ? Sony Corp. is slashing 4 percent of its worldwide work force, reining in spending and shutting plants as it tries to ride out a looming worldwide recession that is battering Japan’s export-reliant manufacturers.

Tokyo-based Sony, which is cutting 8,000 of its 185,000 jobs, said Tuesday it will shut five or six plants — about 10 percent of its 57 factories. Sony also plans to reduce its electronics investments by about one-third by the end of March 2010, although it did not give specific numbers.

The job cuts are the most drastic here since the U.S. credit crunch hit over the summer. They are a bad twist for Sony, which has been recovering from internal problems in recent years under cost-cutting reforms led by Chief Executive Howard Stringer.

“This may mean that Sony is now back at square one,” said Kazuharu Miura, electronics analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo. “Japanese companies are all in trouble because of this unexpected worldwide slowdown.”