Losing it: Japanese traders in January 1990 as the bubble started to burst.
Photographer: Bon Ishikawa/AFP/Getty Images
How a Fading Japan Regained Its Superpowers
The country was once the model of capitalist decline. But those recessionary decades are finally over. Where will Tokyo flex its muscles?
When I moved to Japan, the country was searching for a way out of a long era of economic decline. The Japanese had called it ushinawareta junen — the Lost Decade. But they were wrong. The first Lost Decade would become a second, and then a third. In 2003, during the overlong rainy season when I arrived, the gloom refused to dissipate. About 13 years earlier, on Dec. 29, 1989, the economy had reached a historic peak when the Nikkei 225 Stock Average hit a high of 38,915.87 points. But since then, the downturn would not be banished — much like the stifling low-pressure front that hung over Tokyo when I made my way into the largest metropolis on earth.
The malaise was not immediately visible to me. I’d come as part of an exchange program to teach English in rural Hiroshima. Like many of my generation around the world, I’d been exposed to Japanese culture since my childhood in Ireland and it seemed a good fit for someone fresh out of college: It was sophisticated, technologically advanced and far enough away from home.