If there is one thing that economics can teach you, it would be that any kind of economic action that is taken, the consequences of such action (whether it be positive or negative) are never felt in a vacuum as one economic act that may have been intended for one party can have overreaching effects on many other parties. The current pandemic is showing in plain view how one country for example (China) can rapidly effect the entire world's economy when they went into shutdown for the first time several months ago.
When it comes to Japan, while they were able to avoid any kind of top-down draconian economic shutdown (many reasons for that), their economy is still being seen getting affected by the overall economic downturn that the world is currently seeing right now as they recently saw the biggest drop of their GDP on record.
According to CNN Business (link to article will be down below), Japan's economy shrank 7.8 percent in the second quarter. This number translated to an annual rate decline of 27.8 percent, one of the worst records since they started keeping track in 1980.
Japan still performed overall better than many other major economies from the period of April up to June of this year. Consumption, which accounts for approximately half of Japan's economy, dropped 8.2 percent for the quarter.
Overall Economic Take On This
To contextualize Mr. Hazlitt's quote to this news story regarding Japan's GDP, while they themselves were able to avoid a national shutdown and many other over-reaching economic measures that other countries pursued, they are still seeing downturns in their economy due to how globalized the economy has become and when one major economy (whether it be China or the US for example) sees a downturn, the effects are seen worldwide. While a economic action can be taken in one country, it is naive to say that the effects will only be seen within that one country as every action that is taken in the 21st century is interconnected.
Always remember that whatever economic action you take (whether it is taken to be negative or positive) is always gonna effect more groups than the intended single group, especially within a globalized economy that we live in currently.
Feel free to leave any kind of feedback or additional takes that you may have in regards to what I had to say here 👌.
Articles Cited: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/economy/japan-economy-gdp/