What was the name of Japan’s stock-market bubble that burst in the early 1990s?

Japan’s stock-market bubble that burst in the early 1990s was the Japanese asset price bubble.

The bubble developed during the second half of the 1980s as Japanese share and land prices rose dramatically. The Nikkei 225 reached an intraday peak of 38,957.44 on December 29, 1989, before prices began a prolonged decline.

Loose credit, speculative buying, and expectations that asset prices would keep rising helped inflate valuations. Japanese banks were deeply connected to the property and corporate sectors, so falling land and share prices weakened balance sheets and restricted lending.

The resulting stagnation is associated with Japan’s “Lost Decades,” although that label covers a longer economic period than the crash itself. The term “bubble economy” is related but broader; it describes the era and its speculative conditions rather than the most specific name for the asset-price episode.