Japan's Economic Stagnation

Japan’s story is different - Japan has been battling deflation for decades at least partially as a result of a rapidly aging population with zero desire to import workers. Which is not a judgment of Japan, which instead chose to provide a much higher per capita stimulus to its people with a focus on the quality of life of the average citizen.

Japan had deflation. Can search for information on that. Many articles out there about it.

Isn’t this a large portion of what happened to Japan? They’ve been facing declining gdp for something like 4 decades, too.

Japan wasn't "destroyed" - they fell into the same trap that most emerging countries fall into eventually. Massive economic growth -> people become more wealthy -> they put it all into real estate -> real estate market collapses -> people are disillusioned, stop spending and growth crumbles. Happens to many nations that try to enter the group of high-income economies, same with China. The problem is that people don't trust any other asset besides housing to put th

Japan is said to be deflationary (until covid at least) and lacks an unemployment problem.

The Japanese economy is doing quite well actually: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/business/japan-economy-gd...

Ask japan about how that worked out for them - how may lost decades is it now ?

Is Japan actually in a better place? GDP per capita is worse, work hours are longer, debt is much higher, birth rates are lower. Citation needed.

None of what you described is new or "not normal". Japan has been this way for nearly 3 decades and they are hanging around just fine. Sure it's not a growing behemoth but they are far from doomed.

Japan is in a category of its own. They have a declining population which followed a massive asset bubble that popped 30 years ago. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTJPA647NWDB