Mortgaging: Japan’s future

FOR all the fickleness of Japan's stop-go economic performance over the past ten years, the economy has had one reliable feature: falling property prices. Since 1990, the value of Japanese property has plunged by over 60%. In Tokyo, commercial property has shed more than three-quarters of its value. This deflationary wrecking ball is still hard at work. Leading a nasty sell-off of Japanese shares this week were the same companies that have haunted the market ever since the property bubble burst: construction firms, property developers and the banks that financed their now-crumbling empires.