Is there a way to live without economic growth? 

During Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s I found myself handing out rice balls to Tokyo’s homeless on the banks of the Sumida river. The former salary men — it was always men — slept in cardboard boxes the size of coffins. I peered into one. Its owner had neatly arranged his last few possessions. Crockery, two wash rags and a blanket were all emblazoned with the designer logos I associated with Japan’s boom years when I had lived in Tokyo. They had washed up like artefacts from another age in this unlikely setting. They signalled more than anything else to me that Japan’s economic miracle was well and truly in the past. Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling lived in Japan for seven years. His latest book, Bending Adversity, does an excellent job of reappraising those lost years of economic deflation and social and political stagnation. His argument is simple.