I have long advocated the path of "green growth" for Japan. During the past two decades, the Japanese economy has suffered from an extremely low annual growth rate averaging 0.9 percent in real terms and minus 0.2 percent nominally.
This near-zero growth trend has continued since Japan plunged into the postbubble recession that began in March 1991. I believe the trend has continued for three major reasons:
• The first is the saturation of the automobile market after the proportion of households owning cars reached 80 percent of the total in 1991.