Enough is enough. That isn't a bad shorthand description of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's new economic policy. Enough of lost decades, enough of deflation, enough of an overvalued yen, enough of wage stagnation, enough of Bank of Japan "timidity". More printing of money, more driving down the yen, more pay for workers, more spending by government. Add in some fundamental long-term regulatory reforms, and even longer-term changes in the anti-risk, lifetime job culture, and you have the reason for the rebirth of optimism in Japan.

We don't know yet whether the prime minister will be proved right in telling Barack Obama at their White House meeting that "Japan is back" - Abe himself later admitted some uncertainty - but we do know that share prices have soared by about 40%; the yen has plunged by about 25%; housing starts jumped 8.7% in February; and the outlook in the car sector is improving. All because the new head of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, has said he will just about double purchases of Japanese government bonds to $75bn a month and "take all the measures imaginable" to break deflationary expectations and get inflation up to 2%, from its current -0.6%. If he succeeds, he would end the drag on consumer spending created by the expectation that waiting to spend pays off in lower prices tomorrow, a deeply embedded view that keeps some $8.8 trillion in cash and bank deposits stashed away by Japanese households. By 2017, opine economists Klaus Baader and Kiyoko Katahira at Société Générale, "the deflationary psychology should at least have been eased, if not broken".

David Fuller's view If a long distance swimmer appears to be slowly drowning, how long should his family and friends wait before mounting a rescue?

A long-term monthly chart of the Nikkei 225 Stock Average shows that Japan's once fast growing economy has been in trouble since its bubble years of the late 1980s. These two shorter-term charts (weekly & daily) show that Japan's economic performance was still regarded as moribund until born-again Shinzo Abe started his Prime Ministerial comeback campaign late last year with a promise to reflate.

Interestingly, Shinzo Abe previously became Japan's Prime Minister on 26th September 2006, following the retirement of his charismatic predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, as his term as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) expired. Shinzo Abe's first term as Prime Minister lasted for less than a year before he retired, due to LDP unpopularity following several scandals among cabinet ministers. He was also said to be suffering from poor health.

On current form, Mr Abe's second term should last a lot longer. Inevitably, his current policies are not without some risks. However, compared to the alternative they are worth the risk. Moreover, Mr Abe is not reinventing the wheel, as Mr Bernanke would presumably approve of his economic programme. Currently, he has US support and I think some Asian governments will overlook historic enmities and quietly approve if Japan, allied to the USA, recovers sufficiently to become a credible counterweight to China.

As for the Nikkei, I would still give the upside the benefit of the doubt, at least while the reaction lows continue to rise. Rising lows indicate that more money is flowing into Japan's stock market than is coming out.