The Nikkei 225’s lowest closing level during the post-1989 crash was 7,054.98.
The index reached that closing low on March 10, 2009, during the worldwide financial crisis. Japan’s market had already suffered a much longer collapse after the country’s asset-price bubble burst around 1990, so the 2009 low came after nearly two decades of weakness and partial recoveries.
The late-1980s bubble pushed Japanese land and share prices to extraordinary levels. When the Bank of Japan tightened monetary policy and credit conditions changed, property values fell and banks accumulated large quantities of bad loans.
The Nikkei’s 2009 low is often discussed alongside its December 29, 1989 closing peak of 38,915.87. Comparing those figures shows the extraordinary scale of the long decline, although the index later recovered substantially.