I'm amazed that this is the first halfway-reasonable post to come out of this discussion. The real story here is the demographic breakdown the western world is experiencing, and that Japan has been knee-deep in since the 90s. This has tons of implications, from expected 401k returns that are expected to fund our retirements, to the evidenced fact that older people are working longer, retiring later, and hence eating up a lot of the income and job gains made in the last decade.