Ms. Nishimura, like many Japanese, is unconvinced. “I’ve never experienced inflation. It doesn’t seem real to me,” said Ms. Nishimura, who works at a technology company in the port city of Kobe.

The result of this uncertainty could be a sputtering economic recovery in Japan, which has experienced a resurgence of sorts under Mr. Abe.

Just as Europe’s investors are getting nervous because of the rising possibility of deflation, more people are doubting Japan’s much-trumpeted fight to escape it. These concerns have been heightened by recent data suggesting unexpectedly weak economic growth in the fourth quarter. On Monday, the government said the economy had grown even more slowly than estimated, just 0.7 percent on an annualized basis, hurt by weaker-than-expected consumer spending and capital expenditures.

If more people expected a future of rising prices and wages instead of falling ones, Mr. Abe’s reasoning goes, they would spend now before goods became more expensive. To beat rising prices, they would also invest their money in higher-yielding investments. Companies, confident of a new era of higher sales and profits, would raise prices and wages, completing a positive economic cycle.

A big obstacle in Japan’s path, Mr. Abe says, has been the entrenched attitudes and behaviors in the country after so many years of falling prices. “It is not easy to alter a deflation mind-set that has been in place here for over 15 years,” Mr. Abe told Parliament last month.