Japan's Big Problem

There have been several long articles printed over the last few weeks about Japan's economy, all of which focus on the fact that they are about to enter their fifth recession in the last 15 years.  More importantly, consider this chart of nominal GDP

As the country hasn't had any inflation in over 10 years, so the nominal number is actually pretty representative of their economy as a whole.

Put another way -- the Japanese economy hasn't meaningfully grown in nearly 20 years.