The Bank of Japan (BOJ) headquarters stand in Tokyo, Japan. (Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Japan, a nation often bound by tradition, has been wildly unconventional when it comes to monetary policy. In the first major economy in the postwar era to grapple with deflation and a pronounced downshift in long-run growth, policymakers have had little choice but to get creative. The Bank of Japan was the first to take interest rates to zero and, when that didn’t work, pioneered quantitative easing in 20...