What went wrong? A decade ago few would have predicted the sustained malaise that has gripped Japan since the early 1990s.
Japan is a nation beset by snowballing economic problems that show no signs of abating and blindsided by incompetence and malfeasance among bankers and bureaucrats once thought to represent the best and brightest. The rot of a sclerotic system is exposed for all to see and disparage.
Restructuring is gaining momentum while the restructured try to come to grips with the broken social contract and a risible social safety net. A numbing freshet of scandals implicating bureaucrats in sleazy schemes and the funneling of vast sums of public works money to construction firms with dubious links have further fanned public skepticism.