Japan experienced the Nikkei's record one-day percentage fall during the 1987 Black Monday shock.
Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 14.90 percent on October 20, 1987, the trading day after the crash in the United States. The decline was the index's largest one-day percentage fall at that time and showed how quickly financial stress crossed time zones.
The 1987 shock began with the enormous fall in U.S. equities on October 19, but markets in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere reacted as their trading sessions opened. Hong Kong suffered especially severe losses, while Australia, Singapore, and Canada also recorded large declines.
Japan's market had been rising during the mid-1980s, alongside rapid growth in land and equity prices. The global crash did not immediately produce a depression in Japan, although the country later faced the bursting of its own asset-price bubble around 1990. The Nikkei's October 20 result is distinct from the Dow's October 19 decline because the markets operated on different local trading dates.