For a country like Japan which has a declining workforce and population. Maybe it would give a clearer picture to look at GDP pr. worker or GDP pr. populus?
It looks really bad in fact. Their place in terms of GDP per capita is a disaster.
In 1987 they matched and then surpassed the US on GDP per capita. Within ten years from today they'll be at half (or less) the GDP per capita level of the US.
If Japan continues with their blatantly failed Yen destruction policies (meant to debase their debt), they'll rapidly sink below other countries they used to tower over on GDP per capita, such as Spain or New Zealand.
Preliminary 2015 figures peg their GDP per capita at 24th, at $32k. The US is nearly $56k by comparison.
This is a classic example of the problems with using real GDP as a measure of anything. The US GDP counts crime and corruption as positive contributors to the economy; the error is so deeply embedded in the idea of GDP that economists have a name for it: the Broken Window Fallacy. Japan's GDP counts the world's most efficient urban infrastructure, best rail system, and world's best urban zoning, transit, and development practices against it because it makes unsubsidized city living relatively cheap. Inflation calculations in both countries are nothing but political propaganda.
If you measure cost of living against typical wages, Japan outperforms the USA and far surpasses the UK and almost all of Europe. Just compute a budget including owning a home in a good school district in a safe neighborhood. Don't forget health care and owning two or three cars in the USA. Add back in the value of all the untaxed employer provided benefits in Japan.
>Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
-Robert Kennedy, Speech at the University of Kansas at Lawrence (18 March 1968)
I am not so sure it would look so bad then.
PS: The tourism section surely is booming. :-)