Japan is interesting because they had the most insanely productive economy on earth for decades after rebuilding from WW2 due to multiple factors that should be studied by western corporations and states. That being said, they made the mistake of believing the Keynesian lie and it led to them stagnating ever since. They jumped head first at the policy level into the idea that they need a positive inflation rate. This lead to the case where they printed and printed endlessly, trying to make prices go up, as their beast of an economy was pulling prices down. This is how they saw very minimal inflation despite massive debt and QE. They essentially sucked their whole lead out of their economy by money printing, leaving them as a still above average developed nation today, but nowhere near where they were in the 80s and where they were headed. Now they killed off all their gains from the good times and they have nothing but debt to help them deal with the oldest population in the world.