I think you could prove almost anything depending on the time period you take. Basically, since 1995, Japanese gdp has been very slow growing. In 2009, the GDP has decreased of 5 %, which is far worse than any other rich country of a significant size AFAIK in the last few years.

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mk... (beware that 2009 is missing, I guess the definite numbers may not be there yet).

I think it is fair to say that Japanese economy is in a really bad shape, although the explanation is not as simplistic as the one given by techrunch, obviously. Paul Krugman has a few papers on this which are well know, although maybe not up to date anymore (http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/japtrap.html).

Not sure why the numbers are so different. I simply took the product of the yearly GDP growth rates, as reported by the World Bank.

My sources: http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/g...

http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/j...

http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/countries/en/u...