4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  While these rapid global economic changes were occurring, Japan needed to devote substantial economic resources to dealing with the post-bubble adjustments. As a result, Japan was, in some respects, slow in adapting to these changes by, for example, achieving structural reforms and capturing demand from emerging economies, both of which bring about forward-looking investment.
Following the collapse of the bubble economy, it seemed for a time that some firms had been successful in riding out the strength of the yen in 1995 and in ambitiously undertaking wide-ranging management reforms and restructuring to develop global business strategies.