As Japan pulls out of a deep economic slump, it is time to ask who created the mess. But as with the war guilt question, don't expect an easy answer. Japan does not like to pin blame when its elite is involved. The guilty remain in place; the chances of another disaster remain intact.
One obvious answer, or course, is the collective euphoria that created the bubble economy of the late 1980s. As someone involved in the economic debate at the time, I recall only three commentators who warned of the dangers, and only one of them -- Professor Yukio Noguchi, then of Hitotsubashi University -- has gained much recognition since.
In the NHK round tables and other economic guru talkfests at the time, the conventional wisdom was that, as Japan was a small country, land prices would spiral for ever and the best that could be hoped for was a damper on speculative buying. By corollary, it was assumed the stockmarket boom would also continue forever.