By Takayuki Tanaka

8:00 JST, February 22, 2025

It was very characteristic of U.S. President Donald Trump when he said: “The golden age of America begins right now. Our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.” Although he spoke with solid conviction in his inaugural address, I have no idea whether the Trump administration can actually realize an American golden age.

“Golden age” is a hyperbolic expression, and dictionaries say the term is especially used for times in the past. So, it might be meaningful to look back on Japanese history and think about a golden age in Japan.

If we adopt a definition of a golden age as described by Trump, prosperity and international status are the decisive factors. Opinions may differ, but many people share the view that the 1980s were a plausible golden age for Japan, when Japanese economic power was the strongest it had ever been.

When Ezra Vogel’s bestselling book “Japan as Number One” was published in Japan in 1979, it gave Japanese people a sense of confidence through the next decade. During the 1980s the Japanese economy rose toward its peak. In 1988, Japan was the world’s second largest economy, and its gross domestic product that year grew by more than 6%, a rate it has never reached again. Among the world’s 10 biggest corporations in terms of aggregate market value, nine were Japanese. Big banks in particular overwhelmed other nations’ companies. Some may call it a gilded age rather than a golden age. Actually, it was a bubble economy that was doomed to collapse.

Conventional wisdom has........

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