A Summary of Japan's post-war growth and decline, cumulating in its lost decade:
"A steady-state capitalism in which markets, technology and productivity all stagnate is hard to imagine – although present-day Japan may be coming close. But frontiers, or business opportunities, come in many forms that are often hard to spot ahead of one’s rivals. Nevertheless, Ikeda, a former financial bureaucrat, saw open frontiers beckoning to Japan from all points of the social and political compass when he announced his income-doubling scheme in 1960, by which year Japan had moved from the ravages of its own futile wars to the sunlit security of being the key Cold War ally of the US, the world’s richest and most powerful nation....
The frontiers beckoning so invitingly to the Japanese of the 1960s are now either closed, closing, or in question."
