Illustration: Aya Kakeda for Bloomberg Markets
, Columnist
Is Japan Back? That’s the Wrong Question
For 30 years, investors ignored Japan — but no longer. Now, as the world rediscovers the country, it’s learning that many preconceptions no longer apply.
Three of the most famously ill-fated words in investing are “Japan is back.”
That was the phrase used by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who hailed the country’s return in 2013 during the international community’s brief flirtation with his Abenomics program. A decade earlier, during the premiership of the lion-maned Junichiro Koizumi, Newsweek headlined an article with the same language — which even back then was so cliché that the publication saw fit to append “No, Really!”