It's a fantastic virtual trip through an intriguing part of modern history, and, while it doesn't get everything about the era perfect, it successfully places us on the surface of a bubble ready to pop. Here, we see both the lavish lifestyles of the haves and the less-successful working folk, the respectable businesses and mizu shoubai.

Yakuza 0 gives us a glimpse of what Japan's bubble era economy flush with money and success looks like, from its biggest high-rollers to the people living in the shadows of polite society-primarily, those tied to organized crime. But when the speculation bubble burst at the decade's end and the stock market and property values tanked, things went south at a rapid rate, jeopardizing financial institutions, crippling companies, and wiping out fortunes, setting the stage for numerous government bailouts and issues that continue to plague the country's financial institutions to this day.

Much in the way the subprime mortgage crisis the US would encounter in the late 2000s, banks and lending institutions made increasingly ill-advised loans for people to invest in property with. Then, of course, there were the individuals involved in organized crime, who took the economic boom as an opportunity to further expand their influence into business and real estate. There were plenty of marginalized groups left in the shadows: Immigrants and Japanese natives of outside ancestry, homeless day-laborers living in hotels, rebellious youth who rejected the societal comfort that conformity offered.

Investors, flush with cash, pumped money into fantastic innovations in technology, fashion, and entertainment, fueling a Western media image of Japan as a techno-futuristic, cutting-edge wonderland that would persist for decades afterwards.įrom the outside, everything looked perfect in 1980s Nippon, but not everyone reaped the rich rewards. Speculation had driven stock and property prices to absurd levels, and money and investments were flowing all over the place. Japan rode high on its newfound wealth and status, however.

Header and all Yakuza 0 screens courtesy of Sega

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