与Java教科书中的递归解释相混淆

Question

So I'm reading a textbook explanation of recursion and I'm getting confused. This is the example they use.

    public static void message(int n){
        if (n > 0){
            {
                System.out.println("This is a recursive method");
                message(n-1);
            }
        }
    }

Then they create a main method which calls the message method from above when n=5 and explain that the method is called 6 times. The method calls itself 5 times so the depth of recursion is 5. What I don't get is this: "Because there are no more statements to be executed after the method call, the fifth instance of the method returns control of the program back to the fourth instance. This repeats until all instances of the method return."

What do they mean by the method returns?

Answer 1

It means that the method ends. As the method is void, there is no actual result to return, but you could write it like this.

public static void message(int n){
    if (n > 0){
        {
            System.out.println("This is a recursive method");
            message(n-1);
        }
    }
    return;
}