IIRCC, it was in the late '80s that the wages at major Japanese corporations such as Toyota, Sony, etc. reached parity with union wages in the USA. That was when Japan began "offshoring" a lot of manufacturing activities, including TV assembly to Vietnam and printed circuit board manufacture and assembly to Taiwan, first, and then to where ever there were cheap wage rates. But, of course, the domestic supply chain that fed Toyota, etc. didn't have many "salary men" in their employ.

Cutting way back on domestic investment and domestic entry level jobs is a prescription for stagnation. And the LDP tried to fill the gap with domestic infrastructure projects for the domestic construction industry, with, I recall, lots of complaints from The Economist about poor decisions. Even from 1931 Keynes had a coherent macro theory as to why capital and government sector spending was important to prosperity.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."