Editor's note: The accession of Emperor Naruhito to the Chrysanthemum Throne was formally recognized in a ceremony on May 1, which marked the end of the Heisei era and the start of the Reiwa era. In a post published on his WeChat account, Qin Shuo, a financial commentator, commented:

Perhaps the biggest legacy of Akihito, father of the new emperor, is that Japan is no longer pursuing economic growth.

The scale of the economy is shrinking and the material desires of the people are shrinking. The material life of the next generation will be much simpler than the previous generation.

At the start of the Heisei era, Japan was an innovative country. The number of new products it introduced was dizzying. At that time every item was envied when it was taken back to China.

And Japanese companies were at the forefront of developments that people did not see, such as supercomputers, semiconductors, photovoltaic cells and car navigation systems.

But after entering the current decade, the innovation and development tide of Japanese enterprises suddenly waned. No matter whether digital products or new energy and new technologies, few of the leading companies in the world are Japanese.

At the start of the Reiwa era, it is clear that Japanese industry has lost its enthusiasm for innovation.

One of the reasons for this is that the Japanese domestic market has basically halved in the past 30 years, completely losing the conditions for revitalization.

After the automobile industry and other sectors became sluggish in the Japanese market, the downturn in the entire market naturally made enterprises afraid to invest in research and development.

This economic trend of the Heisei era was not reversed by "Abenomics", and it seems that new economic policies are difficult to come by.

Many times, the biggest problem in Japanese politics is the economy, but Japan's political parties seem unable to come up with new economic policies. Until they do, Japan's economy in the Reiwa era will remain stagnant.