Japan’s automakers will enjoy huge windfalls from the weak yen, yet this only brings their endgame closer.
Since the 1990s, industries cushioned by government protection have rotted in comfort and collapsed one by one.

Japan’s Takaichi Cabinet is responding to a supply-constrained, inflation-prone, labor-scarce economy with a policy mix that is essentially a holdover from the old reflation playbook — a pro-cyclical error in the current macro environment.

Soviet Union: Collapsed due to the violence of state power and the collapse of ideology.

Japan: Collapses without moving, due to the inertia of bureaucratic rule and institutional self-preservation.
In other words, it is not a forced revolution, but a self-destructive decline.

In terms of “structural exhaustion,” “inertia of governance,” and “disconnection from the front lines,” present-day Japan shares several parallels with the final years of the Soviet Union.