One of the main reasons lies in the fact that Japan has traditionally been a society built on consensus rather than strong leadership. Decisions are made in smoke-filled back rooms or on the golf course. They take a very long time to emerge because of the need to get everyone on board, but once a decision is reached, everyone sticks with it. When things are going well, it works marvellously. But when things go wrong, the system lacks the agility to make swift decisions.
Japan is rather like a supertanker heading for the rocks and unable to turn round in time.
Some people liken the situation in Japan to Britain in the 1970s, and say it needs a strong politician like the UK's former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to shake the country out of its old-fashioned ways. Even today, Baroness Thatcher is admired by many Japanese, but few think someone like her would survive long in Kasumigaseki, the home of the Japanese parliament, where the patient building of alliances is the order of the day. The idea was to make Japanese exports more expensive, so that other countries would buy less from Japan. Instead, Japan just got richer. In just two years, the yen doubled in value against the dollar, but the flood of exports did not stop.