So far this is only my intuitive feeling; Japan may be getting out of the miserable inertia.
In the background, of course, there is an economic recovery. The huge reconstruction (I mean the reconstruction after the earthquake and tsunami one year ago) budget and the low interest policy coupled with the quantitative easing by the Bank of Japan can not but positively affect the economy.

Together with the economic recovery (for how long--that is a question, but Japanese companies are very tenacious) I sense some upturn in the minds of the Japanese.
So far we have been engaging in a fight with each other--who gets more from the past pie which Japan had produced and which Japan is now about to lose. We changed the ruling party along with the annual replacement of prime-ministers.

Nothing worked, of course. People are now aware of the demerits of populism. At the same time the baby-boomer generations, an embodiment of the post-war economic success, have retired en masse. One era has passed.

Being freed from the legacy, younger people started thinking about how to build their own future. Many of them are now ready to work hard to meet the challenges of the even more globalized world economy.

Does it sound too optimistic? Maybe. But let us hope that it will become real.