DNR, COMFORT MEASURES ONLY:

"Recession," "stagnation," "slump," were the ominous labels I constantly read describing Japan before I moved here in late 2009. After I'd settled in, a better word seemed "kaiteki," which means "comfort," and conveys a wide range of virtues like convenience, reliability, safety, even charm. I was struck by the disparity between the world's perception of Japan and the remarkable feeling of prosperity here--compared not just with the bubble-era Japan I saw when last living here 20 years earlier, but with the America I experienced in the interim, during its own boom times.

 

Tokyo in recession showed none of the distress you would expect in the U.S. or Europe: no boarded-up storefronts, garbage piles, beggars, trashed subway stations or any hint of serious street crime. If anything, the city had spiffed up considerably during the "lost decades" of my absence. Near my financial-center workplace, the dumpy cinder-block office buildings with smoky coffee shops were replaced by gleaming towers anchored by gourmet dining and high-end clothing stores, bustling with customers. In my home neighborhood in a more traditional part of the city, old businesses did frequently shut down--but the space would close only during a frenzied weekend refurbishment, reopening Monday with rows of bouquets outside used to celebrate new openings.

The numbers don't lie. Japan's economy, by many measures, has been in historic decline, causing distress for a growing underclass of workers who lack permanent full-time jobs and for regions far from Tokyo where the population is shrinking. But the country has, by and large, managed a relatively comfortable, peaceful decline. That helps explain why it took so long for an aggressive response, in the form of Abenomics--and why the public has so quickly developed second thoughts.

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