Check out TIME.com which has a great series of articles on Japan.

Probably the most interesting of the bunch is one entitled “Japan, After The Bubble”.

It is mostly the story of Jin Matsushita, his wealth during the bubble, and his sad fall. Check out this excerpt:

In the autumn of 1989, Jin Matsushita was making more money than he ever dreamed he would; more money, indeed, than he thought he’d ever need. After joining Yamaichi Securities straight out of high school, Matsushita had worked his way up from lowly office boy scribbling stock prices on a chalkboard to fully fledged stockbroker in Yamaichi’s nationwide army of salesmen — and what a golden time it was to be trading stocks for one of Japan’s largest securities firms. Japanese companies like Toyota and Sony were becoming globally dominant, while the country’s businessmen, flush with cash, fanned out across the world, snatching up iconic properties like New York City’s Rockefeller Center, the fabled Pebble Beach golf course and Hollywood’s Columbia Pictures. Matsushita himself was earning an annual salary of $150,000 plus a bonus that often exceeded his base pay. Everyone was getting rich. The Nikkei 225 stock index soared to an all-time high of 38,916 on Dec. 29, 1989. “It was a kind of miracle, I suppose,” says Matsushita.

It was the kind of miracle that doesn’t last: an economic bubble that soon burst. What followed was collapse and years of torpor that came to be known as Japan’s “lost decade.” Neither Tokyo property prices nor Japanese stocks — nor the Japanese people, for that matter — have ever fully recovered. The Nikkei index on June 15 closed at 10,040, an astonishing 75% below its 1989 peak. And Matsushita, now 73, is working the night shift at a convenience store just to make ends meet.

Again, read the whole thing here.

And other articles here.

Alex