Mainichi Shimbun : Japan debt hits 5.5 mil. yen per person

The government's outstanding debts hit a record high of 703 trillion yen at the end of fiscal 2003, or 5.5 million yen per person, the Finance Ministry said.

The figure is up nearly 34.39 trillion yen -- or 5.1 percent -- from the year earlier, and 1.4 times Japan's gross domestic product in that fiscal year.
If we had to substract debts to calculate the GDP/capita, that means the average annual revenue of Japanese would be negative ! This ais called living on borrowed money.

The government's outstanding debts have sharply increased because it issued additional bonds to make up for a tax revenue shortfall and issued extra finance bills (FBs) for yen-selling, dollar-buying foreign exchange market intervention, ministry officials said.
Not a really good way to plan one's country's economic future.