Iwabuchi documented his life on a cheap Sony camcorder, cobbling the footage into Freeter’s Distress. The film was not terribly popular: 2007 Japan was in no mood to wallow. The economy was the best it had been since the country’s titanic real-estate bubble burst in 1990. Growth, employment, and real-estate prices were all picking up. Japan’s central bank had recently raised interest rates above zero for the first time in almost six years.

So Iwabuchi’s film was an unwelcome comedown. It reminded viewers that millions of young people displaced after the bubble burst still lived in poverty and, more controversially, that this was not a lifestyle choice. Freeter translates roughly to “slacker”—the popular myth at the time was that young people like Iwabuchi were just lazy.

Today, there is no doubt that Japanese youth are in distress. Although the green shoots of the mid-aughts didn’t exactly wither, neither did they blossom into a full-blown recovery. Like bonsai, the economic gains stayed small—until they were obliterated by the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. In a report released last year, the government’s principal labor economist openly fretted about the lack of opportunity for young Japanese today, and what that means for the nation’s future.

While Japan struggles to escape from economic permafunk, America’s economy seems to be getting better. Many Americans today have a sense that the worst is behind us and that, if this recovery is anything like those of the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, the next few years could be good ones.

But we should spare a thought for our friends across the Pacific—not just for their sake but for ours as well. No one knows why Japan’s economy never fully recovered, but some economists are starting to trace the problem to young people like Iwabuchi who cannot find good jobs, don’t learn new skills, and neither earn nor spend enough to help get the economy moving. That generational problem, while far more advanced in Japan, is not unlike our own.

When Japan’s real-estate bubble burst, young people had no point of reference other than boom times. So when the job market dried up, many of them welcomed the chance for self-exploration. In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported on these young freeters, who rejected “conformist Japanese culture and its 15-hour workdays” in favor of “working odd jobs for spare cash” and “hanging out.” The freeters pioneered funemployment.

But while the term freeter stuck, the choice to be out of work was soon anything but free. The first freeters are now in their late 30s and early 40s. Almost one-third do not hold regular jobs, and some never have. One-fifth still live with their parents. This perpetual failure to launch has taken a psychological toll. Aging freeters file six of every 10 mental-health insurance claims. Japan’s suicide rate rose by 70 percent from 1991 to 2003, and the proportion of suicide victims in their 30s has grown each of the past 15 years.