Wrigley also raises concerns that Japanese families are still too reluctant to spend and their employers too hesitant to boost wages.

“The biggest question in my mind has to do with domestic consumption,” he says.  

“The missing link in this story of Japan normalising is economic growth being passed on in terms of wages to ordinary people.

“Then people get higher wages, allowing them to spend more and then you get a self-sustaining domestic demand-driven economy. That hasn’t happened yet.”

However, there are undoubted green shoots of recovery, and some economists believe the recent reforms initiated by its longest-ruling Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are finally starting to pay off.

Frédérique Carrier, head of investment strategy for RBC Wealth Management for British and Asia, says investors who are too focused on Japan’s weak economy are missing the point.

She points to corporate reforms by the Tokyo Stock Exchange introduced last year, following other changes brought in under Abe in 2012.

“The government shamed the corporate sector for its notoriously low returns and demanded change,” says Carrier. “As a result, many companies adopted more shareholder-friendly measures, improving disclosures, growing dividends, and announcing share buyback programmes.”

Meanwhile, the Government has introduced tax incentives to get households investing more, she adds. Labour shortages amid a rapidly ageing population and low immigration should help also drive up wages, which have risen by 3.6pc this year alone.

Investors weighing whether to start pouring money back into the Japanese economy face a mixed picture but there is no doubt that the stock market’s latest resurgence will spur a long-awaited wave of optimism.

“Things have changed a lot,” says Boardman-Weston. “It is great to see the market hitting an all-time high even if it has taken half a lifetime.”