&gt; Matsutani’s suggested cure is shutting down excess capacity to free up scarce labor, paring back investment, increasing wages and freezing taxes<p>In my opinion the solution is for Japan to default on their debt obligations. They&#x27;re already aggressively doing that in the classic stealth way, with currency debasement. The problem is, that approach is going to take decades, which ensures a non-stop erosion over that time. It would be drastically better to do it all at once, and to then get on with rebuilding while they have a larger working population. And while they&#x27;re at it, reform the government that got them there to begin with so it doesn&#x27;t happen again. There&#x27;s no scenario where they can ever pay back their national debt, and payments on it are consuming a very large portion of their budget. If they take the long road, it&#x27;s going to be a really bad 20 years at least, as their current problems are going to get far worse.