If there is one Asian country that has been and still is hated by international investors it is Japan. The Japanese stock market has been a huge lagger over the past 3 decades as the country tried to find its way out of its economic malaise. The story of the Japanese economy is an interesting one. The country and economy had to be rebuilt after WWII. It took a few decades to build out the infrastructure and rebuild the manufacturing base that had been destroyed by the war. Rebuild they did and with a mercantilist economic model (promote & subsidize exports, discourage imports through taxes and regulation) Japan became an exporter of low-priced manufactured goods in the 1960s.
