On the one hand, 2001 zoomed by, didn't it? It seems just an eye-blink since we were last cleaning up after New Year's feasts and fireworks, sitting in traffic jams to get back home and gearing up for the Monday-after return to work. It is a well-established fact that the older we get, the more often that depressing day rolls round again.

On the other hand, doesn't it feel like forever? The long-awaited year of 2001 ended with such a convulsion that after September it was hard to remember what it even felt like in January. Mentally speaking, an eon divides last winter from this one. Who remembers now the truisms of New Year's 2001? They were all about the "real" new millennium (as opposed to the miscalculated one of 2000), the bridge to the 21st century, the brave new high-tech world being ushered in by the year that gave its name to a space odyssey. They were about making a fresh start on all fronts, from jettisoning gaffe-prone Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to putting the bloodstained last century behind us at last. And they were, obviously, wildly misplaced.

Optimism, it turns out, was not particularly warranted on any front. In some cases, this was simply an illustration of the rule that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Mr. Mori, for instance, duly yielded his place to popular and charismatic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but on most counts, including the all-important economic one, Japan's situation is no better at the start of 2002 than it was at the start of 2001.