Cheer over Reagan's arrival won't trickle down to most Japanese

The Ronald Reagan moment Japan investors have long fantasized about has finally arrived.

Shinzo Abe's plan to restore Japan's economic might draws heavily upon principles long associated with the former U.S. president: welfare-spending cuts, debt-swelling tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, a lowering of trade barriers, and reforms that make it easier to fire workers.

Yet while investors have greeted this supply-side shock therapy with enthusiasm, Japan's 126 million people may not find its side effects quite so pleasing. As in the U.S., Abe's reforms could hollow out the middle class and create the kind of gulf between rich and poor Japan has long tried to avoid.