The major difference appears to be in terms of labor input. While labor input declined in Japan, it has shown positive growth in Germany. 4  Slide 7 shows why this is the case.
The result is often the insolvency not only of those who borrowed, but of others whose business model is undermined by the subsequent recession induced by the need for deleveraging. This pattern is familiar and it is now uncontroversial to declare that preventing this pattern emerging calls for macroprudential policy measures to stifle demonstrably excessively credit growth.