I wonder why Samsung and LG are doing so much better. They are just the kind of giant do-everything conglomerates that are failing in Japan. South Korean culture is rather similar to Japan, especially in business and education.
Some things I can think of:
1) Korea got started later, and has not had the chance yet to get stale like Japan did in the 90's.
2) The population pyramid is not as inverted.
3) Korea has more PC focus, while Japan is about more gadgets. See how Starcraft, a PC game, is enormous in South Korea but unknown in Japan. That means more software and programming focus early on.
4) Lower labor costs. Not as low as China, but low enough to compete.
I think many of Japan's woes are really a direct result of its earlier success. Post-WWII Japan was extremely poor, and succeeded incredibly because they had a crazy-good work ethic, a relatively well-educated population and tradition of industrial development, and were willing to make sacrifices; as you state, "they were hungry." However the success that followed resulted in changing the very attitudes that engendered that success, and the bubble with its excesses accelerated this change greatly. Japanese confidence, lifestyle, etc, are all now firmly that of a rich, "we've succeeded! time to kick back!" country ... just in time to get the rug yanked out from underneath it.
The instincts and mechanisms that got them so far aren't well prepared to accommodate the changing world, but having tasted wealth, the country isn't really all that eager to toss out what made it wealthy, even when that clearly isn't working so well anymore... "better the devil you know..." etc.
This is the fate of all successful countries to some degree,
but what I wonder is: without the extremes of the bubble, could Japan have achieved a more nuanced transition, becoming a rich country, but maybe remaining a bit more flexible and wary?
I don't think it's really true that everybody thinks "nothing will change, everything continue smoothly, nothing bad will happen." Japanese people very much see the country's malaise and feel worried about the future... but merely recognizing the problem intellectually isn't enough. There has to be a change in "gut instinct" too, and that is much harder. I suppose one way to do it is to increase the pain level to the point where continuing as-is becomes intolerable, and something has to change; unfortunately that seems to be route Japan is taking... :(
The major problem I have with this thesis is that Japan's birthrate started falling off a cliff in 1974 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bdrates_of_Japan_since_195...), when things were getting quite a bit better, but still a dozen years before the formal bubble started.
Some things I can think of: 1) Korea got started later, and has not had the chance yet to get stale like Japan did in the 90's.
2) The population pyramid is not as inverted.
3) Korea has more PC focus, while Japan is about more gadgets. See how Starcraft, a PC game, is enormous in South Korea but unknown in Japan. That means more software and programming focus early on.
4) Lower labor costs. Not as low as China, but low enough to compete.