"What if my wife and I die? What if we get dementia? How will our son live?"

"Mr. A" is 63; the son he's worried about is 35 and has never held a full-time job. Part-time work he has done, but not lately — not in the past 10 years or so. "I guess I'm just not cut out for work," he sighs. He came of age at a bad time. He's a college graduate but the economy was depressed, companies weren't hiring. Part-time work leads nowhere. Soon the young man just lost hold.

His story is hardly unique. Talk of "lost generations" has been current for 20 years and more. It's the biggest reason why "Abenomics" inspires such hope and faith, much of it born of desperation. The young man himself is not desperate, but his parents are. "Depending on us has become second nature to him," his father tells Shukan Post magazine. "I managed to delay my retirement for two years, but soon we'll all be living on my pension and our means will be drastically reduced — and when my wife and I die there won't even be that. What will the boy do then? I worry so much I can't sleep nights."