The three arrows in Abenomics are fiscal spending, deregulation of cosseted sectors of the Japanese economy, and monetary easing.

There has also been evidence to suggest that prior experience with companion animals may be a factor in people's attitudes.

These reforms must aim to boost greater workforce participation by women induce corporations to invest more at home and increase competition in cosseted sectors of the economy.

The 1949 communist takeover in China, the Cold War, America's adoption of Japan as its pampered protégé, and the failure to prosecute Emperor Hirohito for war crimes, allowed Japan to avoid a moral reckoning.

Ideally, that head of state would be an elected president, rather than a hereditary monarch. Indeed, anything worthwhile that a monarch can do, an elected non executive president can do better not least because an elected official is much less likely to be undermined by the scandals of pampered offspring or degraded by the inevitable hypocrisy and servility of a royal court.