The interesting difference to eg. the Meiji revolution, and what makes this really uncharted territory, is that the extreme aging of Japan makes both democratic

The interesting difference to eg. the Meiji revolution, and what makes this really uncharted territory, is that the extreme aging of Japan makes both democratic and violent upheaval near-impossible. You can't vote out the bastards, because the pensioner vote outweighs the youth, and any violent students/revolutionaries will not be able to get the majority of the population on their side. As a practical example, my father-in-law was a salaryman with a rock-solid pension and amazing health care (a month in a hospital costs $50, etc). His generation has no incentive to change the system that has worked for them -- even though it imposes an increasingly unsustainable burden on the ever-shrinking working generations paying for it.