By some accident of fate, a raising star in economics circles named Ben Bernanke, Professor at Princeton University, gains the ear of influential Japanese policymakers at the Bank of Japan. The Bank of Japan begins implementing erratic policies that cause warnings of hyperinflation to appear in the Japanese and Western media. Instead, the boost in inflation expectations gets Japan off the deflationary trap and the economy begins to roll forward again.
This has to be pre-2002 Bernanke though. Sadly as soon as he joined the Federal Reserve Board, he began advocate the same cautious monetary policy we see now in the US that doomed Japan to 20 years of stagnation.