Why didn’t the Japanese government collapse or default long ago under this burden? First, most of the debt is not owed to foreign creditors, but to bond-holding Japanese individuals, Japanese businesses and pension funds (many of them owned by the government itself), and the Bank of Japan, none of which play tough with the Japanese government. In contrast, much of Greece’s debt is owed to foreign creditors, who do play tough and press Greece to change its fiscal policies.
