I feel that this fear of failure is one of many issues with the lack of Entrepreneurs in Japan, but cannot by a long-shot be called the sole reason. And that is not to say that Entrepreneurs are non-existent in Japan, or even as rare as the article states.

I also see a lot of Entrepreneurs making it big in Japan (I live near a tech incubator that is now 30%(?) iphone application companies, and the companies there are doing very well. The largest web-design company in my tri-prefecture area was started by an Entrepreneur.

In addition, I think of companies like Gree, Mobage (which just got purchased by Yahoo) and other startups who are making it big right now.

Another thing to consider is the size of the market. The Japanese market is a fraction of the English-speaking market, so even if a start-up does hit it big, they are pulling from a smaller pool of possible income. This might be another reason (no big dividends) why the Japanese are less reluctant to become an Entrepreneur rather than work at a company and have (fairly) stable job security.

>>So if the business fails, they lose their house; their savings; practically everything they have. What’s worse: the Japanese and German entrepreneurs may also face criminal penalties and go to jail.

I'm curious about this. Someone I know was an entrepreneur who recently went under. He's now happily working on his next project, and has no criminal penalties, and other than losing the building and land for the offices he had built, suffered no life-altering penalties.

At the risk of sounding Wikipedian: [citation needed]