Late on Thursday afternoon, around the time that Joe Biden was saluting officers at Iwakuni Marine base and Rishi Sunak was leaving for Hiroshima from an exclusive business club in Tokyo, investors around the world received a research note entitled Japan’s Rising Sun.
The timing of the analysis, written by the chief economist at the Bank of Singapore and reviving a metaphor that has promised so much and so often disappointed, seemed perfect.
A confluence of factors, say investors, has made the place more interesting than it has been for some time. They can point to reasons why this time might, finally, be different. Japan is at last allowing itself — and being granted — some swagger. The question, as always, is how long the phenomenon will last.