In recent years, discourse on sovereign debt has primarily focused on the Eurozone and- to a lesser extent- the United States of America. Unbeknownst to many, however, a much more severe fiscal crisis has been brewing on the opposite side of the globe. Japan is today the most heavily indebted country on the planet in both absolute and relative terms. With a debt burden equivalent to 240% of G.D.P., and a debt-servicing burden that takes up more than 25% of all public spending, Japan’s number is clearly up. Japan has been enmeshed in economic dislocation for a quarter century; every attempt to jumpstart the economy has been fair-to-middling in success. Every Japanese citizen now owes in excess of $100,000. To put this into context, if a sum equivalent to Japan’s public debt was divided evenly among Kenya’s 44 million people, each one of us would receive close to sh. 26,000,000. But how did Japan get...