By "something", do you mean "immigration"? Why so coy?

The aging population is not a problem. A quick check of Ministry records will show you that no one dies of old age in Japan. You just get stuffed under the futon so the checks keep rolling in.

As my former neighbour put it , "Although I don't agree with keeping a body under the tatami, I do agree with having "my savings/pension" benefit my family for as long as possible!" She also went on to say that the bureaucrats have f*&%ed her around throughout the decades and now it was payback....why not as she put it, "I paid into the fund for 49 years (started work at 16)".

Immigration is one solution, most closely tied to my nationalism point. Better employment opportunities for women would be another. And maybe there are other possibilities out there as well, if they seriously discussed the issue.

Right - I was wondering why you only focused on racism as the reason for Japan's paralysis. It reminded me of a recent conversation I had with someone who simply couldn't fathom why every country didn't have the same immigration policy as his. Of course, there are a huge number of solutions to Japan's problems - if we only allow our imaginations free reign. Failing a North Korean invasion, I favor a cull of retired people as the solution.

But who/what would take their place?

IIRC that is what some companies are already doing - they don't have enough experienced people, so when they "retire" (by reaching the company's retirement age) they get rehired as a part-timer for like 1/4 of the money (while doing 60% of the work).

I actually feel that the birthrate is a huge problem here that isn't anywhere near being solved. Women want to have more kids but they don't want to give up their jobs. Even then, there's a ton of pressure to give up their job when they have kids. Also, if their husband is a seishain, there's the possibility that he'll get transferred, which requires the family to either live separately (happens a fair bit) or quit and move to the new place.

Sooner or later, the 2 tiered system of seishain and hourly workers is going to break up.

Apple is eating Sony's consumer electronic lunch too. Korean government purposely set favorable exchange rates buying Japanese equipment with high exchange rate and selling to the U.S. with low exchange rate and helped industries including DRAM, TV. The resultant margin delta of 10%+ was too large for Japanese producers to sustain, year after year. This was analyzed by SIRIJ and reported.

At least in TVs Japan is still seriously competing, but for mobiles, they've completely missed out. Ten years ago, Japanese mobiles were the best around, with features like e-mail, color screens, Java apps ets years before the West had them... yet today, not a single Japanese company makes it into the top 10. (Joint venture SonyEricsson is still in there, but they lost nearly half their market share in a year and are now trying to arrest their slide by piggybacking on Google's Android OS.)

And re: the pension issue, the problem is that the aging majority has a strong short-term vested interest in keeping pensions high, and no incentive to do anything to change the system. They won't be around to see the Japanese government bankrupted...

Speaking of which, what's the FT opinion on how long the yen will continue to be as strong as it is at the moment? It seems to me that the only way out both for debt repayment and deflation is that sooner or later the Japanese government will have to start printing money ("quantitative easing"), and that will obviously weaken the yen.

I expect the Yen will remain strong as long as the Chinese continue to make lots and lots of Yen purchases. Kill the competition and diversify out of USD at the same time! Surprising they aren't doing the same to the Korean Won, at least not yet.

Do you have a link to the SIRIJ report? Not exactly the most unbiased source, but would be interested in their analysis.

Sure glad we in the US don't have a problem with politically-connected banks screwing over the citizenry . . . hey, wait a minute!

I'm sure the Tea Party will put an end to that!

Welcome to America's second lost decade -- as previewed in Japan!

1996 was the past.

Now, the internet is alive. In 1996, it was very small and just a toy.

Cell phones are everywhere. In 1996, only some had them.

Side airbags are everywhere. In 1996, only front...and no traction control.

Of course, since 1996, the Concorde died, al-Qaeda won a decisive battle destroying the WTC, and Northwest, Ansett of Australia, and TWA died.

My unscientific observation:

I am currently on my third visit to Japan auditing [food] factories. I audit factories all over the world, and I am shocked at the state of Japanese factories. The quality is top notch, but the physical plants seems stuck in the 80's or maybe 90's. Except the two decades of rust on some of these facilities, you would think you were time warped back 20 years. On top of that, the leve of utilization and efficiency is extemely low.

The big cities like Osaka and Tokyo are beautiful and vibrant, but out where the manufacturing is taking place is a whole different story.

It should be unrelated, but the Shinkansen trains are really nice and efficient, but at least in the green cars that my company pays for, they seem to be 75-80% empty.

My personal assessment is that Japan has been trying "stimulus" for the last two decades. With stimulus money flowing why should anyone try to be efficient in the utilization of their factory? Why should they update it?

I may be wrong on my take, but I am not encouraged to the idea of stimulus somehow successfully jump starting an economy, nor am I encouraged about the future of Japan.

The reason that they seem 20 years old is that they were probably built then (during the bubble).

About the shinkansen, it depends where you're going. A lot of the shinkansens were built for political reasons but if you're going from Osaka to Tokyo on a weeknight it's hard to get a seat. During the day is usually an entirely different matter though.

One of the things that (IMO) drags Japan down is that companies waste a ton of money on things and don't call it quits. For example, Sony stopped making walkmans this year. Last year Pioneer finally stopped producing laserdisc players. Willcom, before it was bought, was originally owned by KDDI (which owns AU). KDDI didn't want to sell it as it would mean "giving up" on a division (which hadn't released new products or had a visit from AU executives in years).