Japan is having a governance problem. Their government has been making bad decisions and covering up fuck ups for the past 20-25 year now and their culture of respecting people in charge is enabling unprecedented levels of fuckupery. Abeanomics is a slow moving train wreck for Japan and has basically robbed the older generation of much of their savings. For example BOJ owns half of the ETFs in Japan and 1/3 of the bond market. They pushed down yields so low that people basically have to work till they die because there is no way to live off savings without draining them down. So a combination of increased people needing jobs and not much job growth has been bad for japan. Also like us their leaders in government and industry are so damn old that they cant really get their head around the major demographic technological changes that are happening and take any meaningful action to fix problems.