Even still, the debt is held by people who eventually expect to use it to find their retirements. They can avoid external driven shocks, but at some point a smaller population can’t produce enough care for a larger one. That will play out in the debt markets, either with defaults or inflation.
The BOJ has been trying to raise inflation for like 30 years now and has epically failed. Inflation will not be the problem. The velocity of money in Japan is criminally low.
