"Tarver Engineering" wrote in message
...
No, you're missing the point. It's not imports/exports or any such that
stomped Japan and keep them in the economic sewer for a dozen years.

Sure it is. Japan went out and loaned a lot of Yen in Asia and made it
impossible to pay Yen back. That was way dumb.

That's not what got Japan in trouble.

http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp...d=322&month=13
Japan Can't Inflate Away Its Woes
by JEFFREY HERBENER

[From the Asian Wall Street Journal;
October 28, 1999, Page 10;

[Excerpt]
Economists have been counseling inflation to cure Japan's ills, while
warning of the grave dangers of deflation. This is sheer nonsense. Nothing
apart from war has damaged economic prosperity in the 20th century as much
as the loose money and credit policies of the world's central banks, from
Germany in the 1920s to China in the 1940s, to various South American
countries in the 1980s, to Indonesia and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

It is precisely because of these policies that Japan now finds itself in the
midst of a financial debacle. Having inflated the yen money stock by 10.5%
per year from 1986-90, and having brought the discount rate down to 0.5% in
1997 from 6% in 1991, the Bank of Japan essentially inflated the nation into
an artificial boom. Rather than allow this boom to be corrected, however,
economists are calling for even more of what caused it. The alternative --
deflation -- is deemed such a fearsome enemy that even perpetual
central-bank monetary inflation is an acceptable defense against it. There
are two schools of thought with explanations why this should be so.

[End Excerpt]


Also

Explaining Japan's Recession
by Benjamin Powell
[ December 3, 2002]

After decades of "miracle" economic growth since World War II, Japan's
economy abruptly faltered in 1990 and has stagnated since. Why? Neither the
Keynesian nor Monetarist explanations can provide an account. Only the
Austrian theory of the business cycle provides the explanation.

An Overview of Japan's Economy 1985–2000

After the September 1985 Plaza Accord, the yen's appreciation hit the export
sector hard, reducing economic growth from 4.4 percent in 1985 to 2.9
percent in 1986 (EIU 2001).1 The government attempted to offset the stronger
yen by drastically easing monetary policy between January 1986 and February
1987. During this period, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut the discount rate in
half from 5 percent to 2.5 percent. Following the economic stimulus, asset
prices in the real estate and stock markets inflated, creating one of the
biggest financial bubbles in history. The government responded by tightening
monetary policy, raising rates five times, to 6 percent in 1989 and 1990.
After these increases, the market collapsed.

[End Excerpt]

IOW it was the attempts at relation that wreck the Yen, and had virtually
nothing to do with exports/imports. Note that their crisis, particularly
Real Estate, is strictly domestic.

But let's take this to an appropriate group; not here.