"After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, notes Dokkyo University economics professor Takuro Morinaga in Weekly Playboy (March 5), Japan suffered a financial panic two years before the New York Stock Market crash of 1929. That precipitated the depression of Showa, with a drastic fall in property values and mass unemployment. Farmers, unable to cover their costs, sold their daughters.
Japan’s current recession, says Morinaga, was set off by the Great Hanshin Earthquake in January 1995, after which an increase in the consumption tax from 3% to 5% resulted in a drop of 40 trillion yen in Japan’s nominal gross domestic product."
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