What's Going To Matter In 2013 by Yglesias

Japan: If Shinzo Abe can bring Rooseveltian resolve to Japan and break the back of deflation, it'll be important not just for the world's #3 economy but as an example to the rest of the developed world. Noah Smith, who knows Japan much better than I do, says we shouldn't put our faith in Abe who's really just an ugly nationalist and not any kind of monetary policy wonk. I would say there's no contradiction there. The ugly nationalists running Japan in the 1930s were the first to ditch gold and beat the recession. Adolf Hitler ran a very intelligent and forward-thinking monetary policy regime. Sometimes it takes a national security hawk to beat the inflation hawks. That said, if the upshot is an invasion of Manchuria and a sneak attack on Hawaii we may end up missing the good old days of prolonged Japanese economic stagnation.

Smith seems to have rewritten his blog post ("OK, maybe I'm wrong. I'm no expert in Japanese politics, just a guy who has been reading about the LDP for a long time. If Abe follows through on his radical monetary proposals, I'll gladly eat crow. But think of it this way. ") and has a second update:

Update 2: I think Reddit puts it very succinctly by saying: "Shinzo Abe isn't reading Scott Sumner, he just wants a return to Japanese mercantilism." That's exactly it. A mercantilist in monetarist's clothing.

And then weirdly Smith seems to be agreeing with Yglesias in a new post "Should Japan Reflate?"

Now, I've gone on the record as a skeptic regarding the power of central banks to fine-tune the macroeconomy. In that post, I mentioned the idea of an inflation "snap-up", where expansionary monetary policy suddenly and unpredictably pushes inflation from very low to problematically high. Also, I've cast doubt on the idea that Shinzo Abe, the current hero of the Japanese "reflationist" camp, is really committed to following through on the radical changes he's proposed. 

Still, I think that if Japanese politicians and policymakers were willing to try a big push for reflation, it would be a good idea.