Japan’s Nikkei 225 reached its all-time high on December 29, 1989, before a prolonged market crash.
The index closed at 38,915.87 at the end of 1989. That peak came during Japan’s asset-price bubble, when land and stock prices rose dramatically amid easy credit, optimistic expectations, and intense speculation. The Bank of Japan later tightened monetary policy, and asset prices began to fall.
The Nikkei’s decline was not a single-day event comparable to Black Monday. It became a long collapse associated with Japan’s “lost decades” of weak growth, banking stress, deflation, and corporate deleveraging. The index fell below 8,000 in 2003, although it later recovered substantially. A common confusion is to call this simply a currency crash: the defining losses were in Japanese equities and real estate, while the financial and economic effects spread through banks and businesses.