Well let's see now. Japan Inc. is run by the giant keiretsu groups, so if the place is going to fall apart, the keiretsu will be in the financial firing line, right? Here are the latest stats on the industrial revenues, financial asset holdings, and total debt as a percent of said revenues for each major group (all data is from the 1998 Toyo Kaizai "Japan Company Handbook", available in your local library; original data is in yen, but I've converted the figures at the conservative figure of 120 yen to 1 US$):
Keiretsu Revenue Financial Assets Total debt as Group (billions) (billions) % revenues ------------------------------------------------------------ Daiichi Kangyo 500.7 686.0 26% Mitsui 363.7 684.4 19% Sanwa 353.7 589.7 27% Fuyo 336.6 638.7 34% Mitsubishi 306.1 1142.3 31% Sumitomo 209.4 915.7 29% Tokai Bank 136.3 517.4 33% IBJ 38.9 426.9 34%
Add up the totals, and get rid of double-counting (certain firms bank with more than one keiretsu bank, like Hitachi), and you'll find that the keiretsu make up one third of Japan's GDP, have debts equal to only 27.5% of their annual revenues (well below most Governments, even though in terms of size the keiretsu are larger than most nations on the planet), and have a total positive net credit position (total assets minus debits) of around $5 trillion.
-- Dennis