The Abe government in Japan has passed a ridiculously repressive government secrecy law that goes beyond anything the NSA could even dream about. According to japansubculture.com the state can now declare virtually any given fact a state secret, and anybody divulging that secret, even if he or she didn't know it was a secret, can get ten years in jail. Even asking questions about a state secret is a new crime, that of "instigating leaks", and could result in a prison term. And of course, anything to do with nuclear power is a secret, so you can forget about getting any new information about leaks from Fukushima. More after the fold.
Japan is easily the most fascinating country on the planet today. They have endured about two decades of recession. They have the largest debt-to-GNP of any developed nation. Despite that burden, they pay the lowest yields on government debt of any developed nation. That is possible because A) most Japanese debt is held mostly by Japanese nationals, or Japanese quasi-government agencies and B) because the Bank of Japan is monetizing that debt through a QE that dwarfs the effort of our own federal reserve. And they absolutely have to do it, because a 1% increase in the interest rate for JGBs would eat up the entire national budget. Though the stated goal of the BOJ is to convert Japan's persistent deflation into inflation of 2% or so. To date, they have managed to increase living costs for the Japanese while wages continue to decline.
After years of running a current account surplus, Japan now runs a deficit, in part because of the need to pay for natural gas for energy, now that most nuclear plants have been closed down.
Japan is living out a demographic nightmare so extreme that diapers for adults now outsell diapers for infants. Unlike the Chinese, in which child-bearing has been discouraged by government policy, in Japan the people themselves seem to lack interest in producing a next generation. I wonder why?
To add to economic malaise, Fukushima still spews radioactive material and probably nobody has a clear idea of the extent of the problem, because TEPCO and the government suppress that information.
So now it is illegal to even ask questions. It is 1984 in Japan.