I saw this, but what surprised me was how much this topic was discussed in the British Media (it helped that the British Chancellor George Osborne was visiting Tokyo at the time). With the BBC giving the topic so much air time it was a surprising shift in attitude and a sign to me that the caricaturised version of recent history offered by Fingleton was a jolt to many armchair economists with similarly warped notions, but of Japan as a failure.
Perhaps this exaggerated tug will go somewhere to helping folks arrive at a more realistic perception of the country.