Is japan in national debt?

Question:

Answer:

This question was brought up several times in the past.
The answer would vary according to the definition of "national debt."

Yes, Japanese government owes approx 1,000 trillion yen debt to the nation.
Most of them were accumulated by the government's deficit-ridden national bonds that have been continuously issued since 1994.
However, all of Japan's national bonds are held and supported by Japanese financial institutions firmly based on 1,400 trillion yen savings by the nation, which means Japan has no debt to foreign countries at all! This makes a big difference from the case in the US, which has a huge debt to Japan and China. An extensive portion of US national bonds are held by Japan and China, which means the US cannot design its own national budget without Japanese and Chinese money, which is not known by majority of US citizens.

We (Japanese) are always playing fair game, but Chinese are not, which is obvious by the fact that Chinese communist government would never give up their control over their currency in the international momey markets. Do you know why Chinese government can keep that arrogant attitudes in relations with the US? They know that US national budget would collapse if Beijing withdraw money from the US.

OK? Now back to my previous comment on the top: "The answer would vary according to the definition of "national debt." As long as the debt is limited among your own nation, you would be safe. It is like your parents borrow money from their own sons and daughters. But when you borrow money from someone in your neighborhood (no matter how they seem to be friendly), you never know what will happen. They may act like loan sharks next week or next month. That is what Chinese government "implied" (although they did not do it) in the past.

Wisely enough, the government of Japan has never borrowed any money from overseas; Japan is the second largest money supplier to the World Bank and IMF next to the US; and the largest to the Asian Bank. Japan's ODA (Official Development Aid for developing countries) were world largest for several decades up until recently. We do not need to borrow money from overseas.

Yes, our national budget is in red. But the nation is so rich that our financial institutions can support it based on our huge amount of savings in our banks. I know no country in the world who can bear 1,000 trillion yen (12.5 trillion USD) national bonds by its own nation.