THE land of the rising sun is rapidly becoming the land of bursting bubbles, underlined by yesterday's gloomy set of economic figures.
In a nutshell, Japan's output of goods and services is contracting sharply, its trade surplus is ballooning and its currency is ridiculously expensive, its value having risen about 20 per cent this year.
Companies are hugely overstaffed, as the social structure determines a sort of in-house salaried unemployment, and productivity is not the greatest.
For a post-World War II economic miracle it is not looking good: economists are talking double-dip recession and the figures are confirming it.
What went wrong was a simultaneous collapse of three key planks of the economy - assets (the banks), domestic demand (corporations), and tax revenues (the state).
For the first time in more than 40 years, the banks, saddled with debts picked up in London, America and closer to home, have not been able to join in the economic recovery.
Blueprints geared towards restructuring the economy failed to take off. The switch to draw in more imports in a bid to reduce the trade surplus failed and the Government instead turned to releasing the floodgates on money - using excess savings - to trigger a surge in consumption.
