The Japanese market index that peaked at 38,915.87 on 29 December 1989, just before Japan’s bubble-era crash deepened, was the Nikkei 225.
The Nikkei 225 is a price-weighted index of 225 prominent companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Its record closing level at the end of 1989 became a symbol of the extraordinary asset-price boom that had inflated Japanese shares and property during the late 1980s.
After the peak, Japanese share prices fell for years as the asset bubble burst. The Bank of Japan had raised interest rates, credit conditions tightened, and inflated land and equity valuations became difficult to sustain. The Nikkei eventually traded far below its 1989 record, while Japan entered a prolonged period of weak growth and financial stress often called the Lost Decade.
The Nikkei’s 1989 peak is not itself the name of the crash. It is the benchmark level used to mark the height of the bubble and measure the extraordinary decline that followed. TOPIX is a separate broad Tokyo market index.