Japan’s financial collapse was not inevitable.
Despite clear warnings from Kiichi Miyazawa, elites echoed Asahi Shimbun’s moralistic populism and rejected decisive action.
This collective failure produced the Lost Two Decades and the dismantling of Japan’s major banks.

2016-03-25
The following is an essay titled “The Power and Transparency of Monetary Policy,” published today on page 19 of the Nikkei Shimbun in the Ōiso-Koiso column.
As with the essay introduced the other day, it is a piece that demonstrates the true value of the Nikkei as an economic newspaper.
Kiichi Miyazawa, who was by no means regarded as one of the finest minds in Japan at the time without reason, clearly identified this as a problem that required resolution through the injection of 15 trillion yen in public funds.
In response, Atsushi Yamada, a reporter in the economics section of the Asahi Shimbun, brandished superficial moralism and argued, with the sense of justice of a kindergarten child, that banks, construction companies, and real estate firms had acted on their own and that there was no reason to pour taxpayers’ money into such matters.
Unlike today, Japan’s elites, who had long revered the Asahi Shimbun, echoed this view.
Incredibly, even the leaders of the banking industry joined in.
The result is what we see today.
Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Fuji, Dai-Ichi Kangyo, Sanwa, Tokyo, Tokai, Saitama, and Daiwa—none of Japan’s major banks were able to survive in their original form.
This created Japan’s Lost Twenty Years.
Just as with the countless fabricated articles that have continually damaged Japan’s credibility and honor in the international community, the principal culprit behind this absurd economic outcome was the Asahi Shimbun.
As in other cases, the accomplices were the elites of every sector of Japanese society.
The detailed introduction of the opening essay will be given in the following chapters.