Jim O'Neill is right: "The sun can also rise in Japan," the Nikkei Asian Review article of March 15, and the future will be bright if the country uses technology to raise productivity.
But the rosy outlook is conditional. Japan faces powerful headwinds that O'Neill acknowledges -- extremely poor demographic prospects, a weak productivity record, economic uncertainty generated by the Bank of Japan's need to unwind its quantitative easing effort. It is also confronted by even more substantial blasts that he does not, most notably a suite of attitudes that block change and are virtually impossible to surmount.
