Dear Prime Minister Naoto Kan,

I do a bit of work with a small city in central Japan that — like many small Japanese cities — no longer has a main shopping street and feels like a ghost town after dark. Yet the town — Kasai City, in Hyogo Prefecture — is unlike many others in that it remains relatively prosperous, largely because Osaka and Kobe are only around an hour away, providing plenty of economic opportunity for the city's (small) army of commuters.

The impact of Japan's postbubble economic doldrums is not so easy to see in Tokyo, which has recorded very respectable growth of 6.9 percent over the past decade, and seen the addition of nearly a million new residents. Head out from the capital, however, and the main streets of the country's small- and medium-size towns and cities tell a different story.