At the end of 2012, Shinzo Abe was returned to power in Japan on a promise to revive his country’s ailing economy after a long period of stagnation. Two years on, the prime minister’s ambitious mix of economic policies – often described as “Abenomics” – hangs in the balance.
Far from recovering, Japan’s economy has slipped ominously into reverse. A sharp fall in gross domestic product during the summer was blamed on one-off factors, most notably an increase in consumption tax in April. But hopes that this reverse would be temporary were dashed this week when it emerged that the economy had contracted a further 2.2 per cent on an annualised basis in the third quarter. This has pushed Japan back into recession, its fourth since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Mr Abe’s plan was always ambitious and rested on a series of shocks he proposed to administer to the moribund economy – known as “arrows”. The first was a fiscal expansion, launched within weeks of assuming office. This was followed by monetary stimulus which was aimed at dragging Japan out of its deflationary spiral – a dose that was upped two weeks ago when Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he would increase the central bank’s purchases of government bonds.