In traditional Nippon culture ritual suicide is the final act of protest one makes, say if ordered by superiors to commit an immoral act. In the twentieth century, this translated into a if you can't take the heat... sentiment in the highly competitive corporation environments. Hence young adults had a high suicide rate when they couldn't perform well enough in school to get salaried jobs.

(My understanding of this is warching from the US and seeing the pressures on Japanese businesses to compete wit American ones. While companies on both side were rivalistic towards each other, they all influenced and were affected by the mutual economy, so recession for everybody!)

In the aughts, Japan became aware of a population crisis. Young people were not having enough children to match geriatric mortality. Also young people were disengaged from the traditional values of their grandkid-starved elders: Much like the US, and, I expect, similarly aided by the new deliberation capacities of the internet, kids realized their elders didn't care about the welfare of them or their kids, but their own legacies and, maybe, to play with the cute infant.

Which brings us to this era, in which Japan is looking to move away from the hypercompetitive, pro-suicide culture that presumably drove productivity in the 20th century.

As a note, the US typically outperformed Japan in productivity per capita, mostly because we are culturally less compliant and obedient to our authorities, hence our industrialists are quicker to replace labor forces with automation. The quicker US companies could downsize production teams and send out another batch of pink slips, the better.