"The rationale for a Japanese debt crisis is clear. This year, for the first time ever, the Japanese budget will be more reliant on bond issuance than tax revenues. The ratio of Japan’s gross government debt to GDP has breached two hundred per cent. A Godzilla-sized rollover of Y210,000bn – equivalent to the entire public debt of Italy – will take place over the next twelve months."

(210,000 billion yen is 2,320 billion dollars.)

Whatever their ability to finance such a crushing burden now---the author cluelessly comments that "Bizarrely, Japanese policy-makers have been more concerned with minimising the current interest rate on public debt than reflating the economy and generating higher tax revenues and lower social costs over the long haul."---it's hard to see how this doesn't end in tears with a very rapidly greying population (a very deflationary thing) and the younger people just not being willing and/or able to have families.

Yeah, the bond market is sanguine now, but "something that can't go on forever won't".