Japan is the world’s second largest economy after the United States. In 1999 Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $4.35 trillion, compared to $9.15 trillion for the United States. Japan also has one of the world’s highest living standards. Economists compare living standards in different countries using a measure called purchasing power parity. This measure takes into account the countries’ differing costs of living. By this measure, Japan’s per capita GDP rose from 21 percent of the U.S. level in 1955 to 56 percent in 1970. By 1992 per capita GDP had reached $19,920, 86 percent of the U.S. level. Despite the overall strength of the Japanese economy, in the late 1990s Japan was mired in its longest recession since World War II. GDP, which had grown slowly in the early 1990s, fell 0.4 percent in 1997 and another 2.8 percent in 1998. This was the first time in the postwar era that Japan’s GDP declined two years in a row.

Japan's system of economic management is probably without parallel in the world. The extent of direct state participation in economic activities is limited, and the trend is for even less direct involvement. Nonetheless, the government's control and influence over business is stronger and more pervasive than in most other free-enterprise countries. This control is not exercised through legislation or administrative action but through constant—and to an outsider almost obsessive—consultation with business and through the authorities' deep indirect involvement in banking. Consultation is mainly by means of joint committees and groups that keep under review, monitor the performance of, and set targets for nearly every branch and sector of the economy. In addition there are several agencies and government departments that concern themselves with such aspects of the economy as exports, imports, investment, and prices, as well as with overall economic growth.

Government-industry cooperation, a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are now eroding. Industry, the most important sector of the economy, is heavily dependent on imported raw materials and fuels. The much smaller agricultural sector is highly subsidized and protected, with crop yields among the highest in the world. Usually self-sufficient in rice, Japan must import about 50% of its requirements of other grain and fodder crops. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch. For three decades overall real economic growth had been spectacular: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s, and a 4% average in the 1980s. Growth slowed markedly in the 1990s largely because of the aftereffects of overinvestment during the late 1980s and contractionary domestic policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Government efforts to revive economic growth have met little success and were further hampered in late 2000 by the slowing of the US and Asian economies. The crowding of habitable land area and the aging of the population are two major long-run problems. Robotics constitutes a key long-term economic strength, with Japan possessing 410,000 of the world's 720,000 "working robots".