First, it should be noted that gold cannot provide a refuge from monetary collapse. There is not enough gold in the world to equal the Japanese GDP. Gold is mainly a mental refuge. The only real refuge it could provide is for those few people who own gold during a panic-induced speculative bubble. Even then, those people would have to re-convert those gains into currency. Gold is the least "real" kind of money there is.
It seems clear to me that the Japanese are facing the classic crisis predicted by Marx. The credit system has lost the ability to compensate for accumulation. There is effectively less and less money in the Japanese economy. That's why they want to spur inflation. The problem is that they can't seem to get the Japanese bourgeoisie to spend. I don't understand why the Japanese can't use this new, super-cheap money to refinance their debts and finance new industry. Imagine what American capitalists would do with money borrowed at 1 or 2 percent.
I think we have to consider whether interest rates in Japan are actually much too low. It may be that the only lender willing to lend at such low risk premia is the Bank Of Japan. That's okay with me as a Marxist, provided the Bank Of Japan has enough money to lend and can get it to productive areas of the economy, but I don't think the BOJ is in that position. I think they're in the position of lending money at the lowest possible risk premium to banks whose actual creditworthiness is just barely investment-grade. If so, it seems to me that is a dangerous game. If so the BOJ would simply be betting against a massive default. Maybe Japan Inc. is too large to default. Maybe it isn't.