Illustration: Pete Ellis
There were times in the 1970s and 1980s when Euromoney’s coverage of Japan could occupy more than a third of a single edition.
It was a mesmerizing market to report on. Through the 1970s we watched the country’s international standing as a financial centre grow, the emergence of its capital markets and the utility of its currency. Through the 1980s we studied the strategies of its banks, state and private, as they merged at home and began to take on the world. We even pictured a future in which Japan took over the IMF.
And then we were there to follow the bursting of the bubble and everything that followed. The famed ‘lost decade’ has actually lasted for three – and counting.
Japan’s rise and fall, in market terms, has been reflected by the changing attitude of international banks towards it.
