The Nikkei's sudden brush with doom and gloom is all China's fault. If only those hacks in Beijing knew how to run an economy, Japanese stocks would be booming, deflation a distant memory and Abenomics 101 the newest class at Harvard Business School this semester.
Back on planet Earth, the Tokyo conventional wisdom is coming in for a brutal reality check. The Nikkei has officially entered a bear market, with shares down 21 percent on Wednesday from a recent peak in June. The blame doesn't belong to China, but to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe squandering three-plus years of the most enviable reform environment Japan has seen in decades. If Abe had delivered on even 10 percent of the restructuring he promised, investors wouldn't be fleeing, regardless of China's growth rate.
Abe's done even less than that. Never mind asking where the 1,121 days of his premiership went. Let's explore the last 403. In December 2014, Abe held a snap election the Japanese didn't want. The ostensible reason: to win a fresh mandate to implement his "three arrows" of economic revival.