This is a huge development. Japanese women have traditionally worked far less than females in many other wealthy nations. Since the overall population is stagnant, pulling women into the labor force is one of the obvious levers the country can pull to boost the size of its labor force, and thus the productive capacity of the economy. Abe has famously claimed that Japan’s women are the resource-poor island nation’s “most-underutilized resource.”

“This is simply bigger than anything else Japan could have done,” said Adam Posen, president of the Petersen Institution for International Economics, at a recent conference on growth in the Asia Pacific region. Posen, a longtime student of the Japanese economy, argues that the addition of more Japanese women to the labor force actually is a double whammy. First off, it boosts the size of the labor force. But it also increases labor force productivity given the high levels of education of Japanese women.