There's good and bad to everything, Japan also had a decade long recession partly because "they pulled out all the stops" keeping some banks/businesses afloat that they should have allowed to go under early on.

They're big on stability because being on an island with hardly any resources means the negative effects of war really gets magnified. I've been told that's why the have so many rules of politeness in their culture, is to prevent flareups. But too much stability breeds complacency and they got a huge shock when the West showed up with a navy that was at least 2x technical superiority.

All that being said, if they can manage a modern economy with a shrinking population then they are ahead because peak oil will make the rest of us deal with what Japan is already dealing with. I think Europe is another example but they're bigger and their population will shrink later.