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HACHIOJI, JAPAN — The clues that all is not well were scattered across this middle class city in the far western suburbs of Tokyo.

Taxis were lined up three abreast and 12 deep in front of a railroad station with the line barely moving because few riders were hailing them. Shoppers were sparse on a weekend in a nearby department store, even among the counters piled high with inexpensive clothes imported from China.

Several restaurants were only a third to half full on different evenings. A music store with instruments in the window priced at $100 to $5,000 blared tunes into the street but was empty of potential buyers. A longtime resident said that property values were continuing to slide.

“It’s that way all over Japan,” said a senior editor. “People don’t feel like the economic recovery has reached them.”

As if to underscore that assessment, Japan’s leading breweries reported that beer shipments nationwide dropped 2.8 percent in August compared with a year ago. The 41 million cases that were shipped marked the lowest level since 1992 despite the unusually blistering heat of this past summer.

Hachioji, which means “Eight Princes,” was a castle town sitting astride a main road running to the west from Edo, now Tokyo, the seat of government in Japan’s feudal era. During the Meiji period of Japan’s modernization, Hachioji was incorporated into Tokyo, the capital that is like a prefecture or state.

Now Hachioji is a mid-sized city of 550,000 people that reflects similar communities all over Japan. Situated 25 miles from the center of Tokyo, Hachioji is the site of 17 universities and the dignified tombs of the Showa Emperor and Empress, the posthumous titles of Emperor Hirohito, who reigned from 1926 to 1989, and Empress Nagako.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been in office just under a year, has been credited with having revived an economy that had been in the doldrums for two decades. As creator of “Abenomics,” he has begun a fiscal stimulus, installed new leaders in the central bank, and initiated structural reform.

A government report last week said “the economy is on the way to recovery at a moderate pace.” But the report acknowledged that personal spending had been pulled back.

At the same time, Abe has been widely reported as preparing to ask the Diet, or national legislature, to raise the consumer tax to 8 percent from its present 5 percent. He is also said to be considering a cut in corporate taxes. That combination is almost certain to stir political controversy.

Already those proposals have caused critics, even in his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to question his judgment. “Abe is cautious,” says one analyst. “He has shown himself to be a good talker but whether he is a good actor …” Her voice trailed off.

For the past 20 years, Japan’s prime ministers have lasted in office for about a year each, except for Junichiro Koizumi, who served from 2001 to 2006. That turnover does not make for continuity in policy or leadership. Even so, said another analyst, there has so far been no visible movement within the party to ease Abe out.

Several polls seemed to confirm that. They said that the approval rating for Abe and his cabinet hovered around a respectable 61 percent.

In Washington, the Congressional Research Service (CRS), noting the interaction of the U.S. and Japanese economies, said “the mediocre performance of the Japanese economy over the last two decades” had been exacerbated by the global economic slowdown and the tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear accidents of March 2011.

“Japan,” the CRS concluded in a report last month, “is still struggling to achieve sustained economic recovery.”

In a less gloomy event, the nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, Caroline Kennedy, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week. The daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy said: “This appointment has a special significance as we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of my father’s Presidency.”

“As a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific,” she said, “he had hoped to be the first sitting President to make a state visit to Japan.” During the war, John Kennedy’s PT-109 patrol boat was sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri in the South Pacific. The future president was later reconciled with the Amagiri’s captain, Kohei Hanami.

Caroline Kennedy concluded: “If confirmed as Ambassador, I would be humbled to carry forward his legacy in a small way and represent the powerful bonds that unite our two democratic societies.”