While this is true, I think Japanese culture mostly just makes this more obvious. A big part of it is based on perception (in western culture, change is much mo

While this is true, I think Japanese culture mostly just makes this more obvious. A big part of it is based on perception (in western culture, change is much more accepted generally, and people tend to show/believe they change much more than they actually do). For example, what happened during the Meiji area is pretty unique in world history AFAIK, and that was a gigantic change. My experience in Japan is that people are less willing to change things, but are much more willing to change once they agreed on the nature of the change (that's part of what makes Japanese company still efficient today: people are willing to sacrifice a lot for something else than their own self if they believe it worths it). There is no question that Japan is facing huge challenges as of today - but I would not bet on Japanese society not being able to deal with it once they really have no choice. Also, the young people the article refers too are actually between 25 up to 40 years old (people entering the job market after the bubble in mid 90ies), so mathematically, old people who benefitted from the pre-bubble system will be less and less influential