Talk:Lost Decades

Merger Proposal

This article should be integrated with Economic history of Japan. It is very poor, as it stands. cckkab (talk) 07:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: The Japanese rise in the 1800s was and should something to be left to it's own section because of its originality. It should improved and merging it would make the topic cluttered.
• Support I completely agree; it's something that should be mentioned in detail there. The Squicks (talk) 21:53, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is a very notable event, and is getting a lot of discussion in economic circles currently, due to the current economic crisis, as there are clearly lessons to be learnt from this. 91.110.232.156 (talk) 22:53, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is a significant event in WORLD ECONOMIC HISTORY. This is such a significant event, I would not have thought to search for Japanese Economic History.--64.179.182.35 (talk) 17:33, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose; As stated, this is an important event in Japanese history and receives quite a bit of press today. I realize the article is in bad shape, but merging it is not going to improve matters. Madman (talk) 04:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as per the two anonymous IP editors. This article needs to be improved, buffed up, not hidden away. It could even become a Featured level article, if someone took the effort. LordAmeth (talk) 18:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as a significant era in Japan which, as others have pointed out, continues to receive press and academic coverage even today (not to mention all the press and academic coverage in the past). ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:31, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: As many others have stated, it is significant and important. This could very well be a template for what is ahead for the US based on the similarities. It seems the reason you want it merged is because the article is "bad and lacking" per se and that yes it really needs to be improved preferably by people with the relevant economic background but merging it is clearly not a solution. You should judge the article by the subject merit not by its current status. OneiroPhobia (talk) 01:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
• Comment If the article stays, is there anyone here who would be interesting in adding more material to the article? The Squicks (talk) 03:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, it was just tagged as part of 日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is a very important concept in Japan, and a case study for what might happen in the US today. It is important enough to deserve a separate page. --Charizardpal (talk) 02:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose: an important period, without any "real" reason why it should be only a section of an article. Eugeniu Bmsg 03:55, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. This article should be improved, not merged.Rreagan007 (talk) 01:29, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is a very significant period in Japanese history and is parellel (though not as severe) to the Great Depression that took place in the U.S. This is a topic that should be a seperate article. The Japan article should have a brief summary and a link to this page. Additionally, the Lost Decade may be the future of the U.S. and should be brought to the forefront of the public's awareness with EMPHASIS! I hope more qualified economists and financial scholars, especially familiar with the Lost Decade, contribute to this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrSCBaker (talk • contribs) 13:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Hell Yeah! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.88.104.202 (talk) 03:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Large unsourced section

There's an edit from "07:13, 18 November 2009 174.48.153.228 (talk) (7,396 bytes) (undo)" that contains a great deal of sourceless , non-neutral analysis of the Lost Decade. It pretty obviously was created with an intent to compare it to the current economic recession and response in the US. I hesitate to eliminate this content, but its pretty clearly slanted, at times simply inaccurate and it doesn't meet citation standards. Does anyone want to save it? Original submitter only had an IP. PantsB (talk)

Upon further review, I removed the section. It was plagiarized from an Op Ed written by Fergus Hodgson [1] PantsB (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC).

Counterargument

The Myth of Japan's 'Lost Decades' Eamonn Fingleton presents a counterargument to the perception of Japn's so-called stagnation. I think he raises important points. Please take a look. --Shinkansen Fan (talk) 16:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get some pictures such as charts or graphs on this topic? 129.120.177.8 (talk) 01:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Fingleton has an update on this in the Sunday NYT: The Myth of Japan’s Failure. He does have some arguments that sound good, but I don't know enough about it to decide if it is balanced overall. Rwendland (talk) 19:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparent contradiction

"It also meant credit became very difficult to obtain, due to the beleaguered situation of the banks; even now the official interest rate is at 0.1%."

If credit is difficult to obtain, it should be expensive and not cheap. Please explain or source the first sentence. --183.174.206.242 (talk) 14:35, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Merger with Japanese Recession

There's talk of merging this with the other 2000s recession article, Japanese Recession. I think the two are separate, because the Lost Decade is very specific, and still referred to as a specific time period. Guroadrunner (talk) 08:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Counterargument Section

It's good to provide a well-argued alternative perspective, but I'd say the amount of space spent on his argument is quite out of proportion to its significance. Weygander (talk) 01:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree, the article spends too much time focusing on the counter-argument and doesn't go into details of the economic and social effects of the lost decade. Saying something like "However, there is serious dispute on whether or not such “lost decade” or decades actually took place," gives too much credence to a flawed fringe view. --Asingh0208 (talk) 09:52, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

With all due respect to Fingleton, this has red flags all over it.

One, he's not a member of an academy and thus does not publish under peer-review. Two, he offers a prize for people going into a debate with him. This is a common tactic among denialists of various kinds (vaccination, climate, HIV, evolution, you name it) used to draw attention of more prominent researchers and thus manifest their point of view as a legitimate counter-argument or, should no one reply, claim that the argument stands undefeated because nobody has shown up to get an easy bag of money. The fact that he specifically challenged an ambassador reinforces this notion. Lastly, the argument does not seem to have definitive backing from others in the academia while being centered around a very important topic for a country that has an incredibly large academic apparatus that has previously dealt with much more incendiary issues like Nanjing. It reeks of a conspiracy theory that seems to be centered largely around sensationally-expressed semantics of what the fairly poetic term "lost decade" should or should not mean.

The section has to either go entirely or be reduced by several orders of magnitude and supplemented with counter-arguments. I will be making the cuts shortly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.113.43.147 (talk) 19:12, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Unclear

        ...recently the decade from 2001 to 2010 is often included,[2] so that the whole period of the 1990s to the present is referred to 
 as the Lost Two Decades or the Lost 20 Years. 

I don't understand this sentence. Does it encompass 1990-2010 or it continues in the present (1990-)? It's just not clear from the text. I suggest editing.

ShockD (talk) 18:29, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Sudo's comment on this article

Dr. Sudo has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

The bubble was caused by the excessive loan growth quotas dictated on the banks by Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, through a policy mechanism known as the "window guidance"

（suggestion) remove this sentence. (rationale) I do not think the above writing is consistent with the view widely held by policy makers and scholars. At the moment, there is no agreement both among policymakers and scholars regarding why bubble occurred. See for instance http://www.imes.boj.or.jp/research/papers/english/15-E-12.pdf

It is notable that there is a criticism that the delay in the Boj's action to curb banks' excessive lending was one of the causes of the bubble and bubble burst. I do not rule out the possibility that the central bank's action contributed to the bubble in this sense.

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Sudo has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:

• Reference : Nao Sudo & Kozo Ueda & Kota Watanabe, 2013. "Micro Price Dynamics during Japan's Lost Decades," CAMA Working Papers 2013-63, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:15, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Japanese word for Economic Stagnation

I was told once that the Japanese phrase for this period translated in English to "A Long Walk in a Cold Hard Rain".... Has anyone heard this? Would anyone be able to provide a link to that phrase?

--Patbahn (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Japan federal funds rate.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:37, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 7 July 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved, reflecting the predominant sentiment that the Japanese usage is primary. (non-admin closure) NotReallyMoniak (talk) 14:21, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

---

Lost Decades → Lost Decade (Japan) – No indication that "Lost Decades" in the primary name. Move was started without comment or discussion. intforce (talk) 09:50, 7 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 07:24, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Dr. Vogel (talk) 21:58, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

• Lost Decades → Lost Decade (Japan) (currently a redirect back to Lost Decades) – No indication that "Lost Decades" in the primary name. Move was started without comment or discussion. intforce (talk) 09:50, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Are there any other topics known as "Lost Decades"? (Also, especially if it's plural, "Decades" should probably be lowercase.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Comment This has been moved before [2] [3]. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:07, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Just noticed there is a disambiguation page at Lost Decade. The move that made it plural was undiscussed, but was a full year ago, and the move that removed "(Japan)" was 10 months ago. This should probably be discussed. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:44, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

While some commentators use the term "Lost 20 Years" or even "Lost 30 Years", the WP:COMMONNAME for the topic remains "Lost Decade" (失われた10年). Someone has replaced all references to "Lost Decade" within the article with "Lost Decades", even though the cited sources use "Lost Decade". This will have to corrected. intforce (talk) 22:30, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Searching via Google Scholar (this query for lost decade: "lost decade" japan -"decades"; this for lost decades: "lost decades" japan), and scrolling through several pages of both, while there are nominally more hits for Lost Decade, none of these papers are more recent than what appears to be the early 2010s (save for a few like this one from 2021, but even then, that particular paper focuses on exclusively the 1990s). The clear scholarly consensus since around the mid-2010s appears to be in favor of "Lost Decades". Curbon7 (talk) 22:41, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

There are 1,220,000 Google hits for '"lost decade" japan' and 61.000 hits for '"lost decades" japan'. I see that you have reverted my edit. Quoting "lost decades" when the cited source clearly states "lost decade" is simply plain wrong, no matter what the article title is. intforce (talk) 22:48, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

You can't look at just WP:GHITS, you have to look at the content of what comes up on Google. Searching Google main with the queries you used (with minor adjustments for better searchability), I easily found this working paper from the Dallas Fed and written by prominent Japanese bankers, this Harvard Mag feature, and several others from recent years; on the other hand, there are very few sources post ~2015 that describe this as a "Lost Decade", and those that do focus exclusively on the 1990s while acknowledging that the crisis has continued since then, as can be seen with this piece by the Brookings Institution. The vast majority of books published on the topic since the mid-2010s (examples: [4] [5] [6]) overwhelmingly prefer the pluralized term. It is clear that the scholarly consensus post-the mid-2010s is to refer to this continuing phenomena as the "Lost Decades". As such, the article should retain the name "Lost Decades" and in tandem should be expanded to include the recent studies and reports. Curbon7 (talk) 23:50, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support Lost decade (Japan) (without the caps) – sources clearly favor the singular decade by a wide margin, and show that caps are not necessary or consistent. Restore the title to before the undiscussed moves, appropriately lowercased, or use Japan's lost decade. Dicklyon (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose / other Searching google scholar for "lost decade" (36,600 hits), "lost decade" japan (21,800 hits) and "lost decades" japan (4,910 hits) would strongly suggest that the lost decade of Japan is the primary target for a search on lost decade. That the article also encompasses "lost decades" is not significant. The article's lead defines the scope to also refer to the subject as extending beyond a single decade. Recent google scholar articles continue to use the term lost decade while some also acknowledge a broader scope. An overly precise article title is not ultimately a service to our readers in this case. I also note that there is mixed capitalisation of the term in sources (see also this ngram). Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, there is no reasonable reason to cap decade in the article title and to cap the term lost decade/s in prose. I would therefore propose that this article be titled "Lost decade", that this be the primary target and that the disambiguation page be linked by a hatnote from this article. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:29, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  What are you proposing for the disambig page Lost Decade? Leave it distinguished just by caps, or move it to Lost decade (disambiguation)? Dicklyon (talk) 15:02, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Lost decade (disambiguation) Cinderella157 (talk) 23:23, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Lowercase singular, whether disambiguated or not. Sources apparently don't consistently capitalize it or pluralize it. The fact that some people expand the concept to cover multiple decades can be discussed within the article, but does not need to be in the title. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:59, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, overwhelming primary topic no matter what title it's at. —Xezbeth (talk) 12:50, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead

Either the lead sentence should be reworked to incorporate "Lost Decades" (plural) in bold, or the article should be moved to "Lost Decade" (singular). Otherwise it just looks strange to have the lead not be consistent with the article title, and makes it appear as though there is an error. Pinging @Intforce, who probably has more insight into this than I do. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:07, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done --16:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC) Ash-Gaar (talk) 16:42, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:01, 4 January 2024 (UTC)