In 1990-2003, Japan went through a prolonged economic stagnation and slump. Many called this situation a Great Recession, alluding to the US Great Depression of the 1930s. In both cases a deflationary crisis followed a burst of an asset bubble. The American malaise was acute, the Japanese was tempered. Origins of Japan’s slump and policy responses to it were debated worldwide in the academic press and in the media. Japan’s Great Recession was a product of errors in fiscal and monetary policy as well as of obsolescence of many national economic institutions in the global environment. To conquer the crisis, the Bank of Japan had to pursue unconventional monetary policy, and the government called out radical institutional reforms.