The main question is to what extent economic growth can help towards paying down debt.
(Manufacturing production is sometimes covered as a more rapidly available statistic than GDP.)
26 Oct 2014.
GDP growth over the last three years has been a cumulative 2.8%, i.e., right in line with long-term growth of about 1% per year. It is hard to see any positive impact from Abe's policies. Industrial production has been roughly flat, probably in part due to more expensive electricity. Japan is not going to grow its way out of excessive government debt.
Selected commentary
19 May 2009. Econompicdata.
http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/05/japanese-gdp-crashes-hard.html
“Japanese Economy Crashes… Hard”
12 Jul 2014. Economist.
“Eclipsed by Apple”
““The giants in Japanese electronics” were set to keep conquering the world with all manner of exciting new gadgets: Video cameras! Fax machines! CD players! And they did, for a while. But now they all struggle to compete in the most important categories of consumer electronics against rivals such as Samsung of South Korea and especially Apple of the United States.”
Flat screen TVs share of market down from 43% in 2005 to 21% now.
Since 2001 Sony revenue approximately flat; Apple up from 0 to twice Sony.