there's another constant that runs through

the psychological thriller "Earthquake Bird": Japan.

Specifically Japan in the late 1980s

is a real presence throughout the film.

Sometimes it's awe-inspiring for the characters

and sometimes it's incredibly disorienting.

Which is kind of fitting,

because in the 1980s a massive bubble economy

was remaking Japan into this awesome,

extravagant, dizzying party.

A party that was about to go off the rails.

This is a taste of Japan during the bubble.

(upbeat music)

Party. That's the word that keeps coming up

when you read articles about the bubble.

And it's one reason this big party scene

made it into "Earthquake Bird."

even the macroeconomic parts of the story

feel like partygoers taking things just a bit too far.

This is a super-simplified version of what happened,

but the bubble got its start in 1985,

at a time when Japanese goods

were selling like crazy around the world.

And... America didn't like that so much.

At a trade summit that year,

the US got Japan to agree to weaken the dollar

relative to the yen so that maybe, just maybe,

American goods could sell like crazy around the world too.

But in agreeing to that, Japan risked a recession.

So they slashed interest rates to prevent the yen

from getting too strong.

And that, caused this.

(upbeat dance music)

Seemingly everyone in Japan and their uncles

suddenly rushed out for a loan

and hypercompetitive and even reckless banks

were eager to dole them out.

People bought land and then used that land to secure

further loans with which they bought stock and more land.

It was a buying frenzy, which you can all see in the charts.

The real estate and stock markets tripled in value

in just a few years.

And there are these stories that make tangible

the obscene amount of wealth in Japan during the time.

It's hard to even tell if they're true or not,

but they're still revealing in how extra they are.

To hail a cab in downtown Tokyo,

it's said that you had to wave a 10,000 yen bill in the air,

100 bucks, just to get a driver's attention.

If you dropped that same bill on the ground

in the hottest neighborhood of Ginza,

it was allegedly worth less than

the tiny patch of sidewalk it covered.

The grounds of the Imperial Palace,

which weren't ever going to be for sale,

were somehow worth more than the entire state of California.

And the land in greater Tokyo was four times more valuable

than the entire United States.

Yep, the whole country.

You can imagine it made this search

for an affordable apartment pretty difficult.

It even began to spill over as Japanese companies

bought up parts of the globe,

starting small, just a skyscraper or two,

then graduating to golf courses, movie studies,

and finally even landmarks like Rockefeller Center.

If commercials are a window into a nation's soul,

and I like to think they are,

then I submit to you that this famous

energy drink commercial shows just how triumphant

Japan felt when they belt out stuff like this:

(singing in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language)

But what was daily life like

for those who lived in the bubble?

Well that too was often a...

(upbeat dance music)

In bubble Japan, there was apparently a lot

of time and money spent on earthly pleasures

in nightlife districts like Ginza or Shinjuku.

Which was a fairly dramatic shift for a culture

that had previously emphasized saving and community.

Food was big, and it became increasingly extravagant.

In some places, after-dinner coffee

was served sprinkled with gold dust for 500 bucks.

But drinking may have been even bigger.

This chart shows what Japanese workers

used their wages for, both at the height of the bubble

and 30 years later.

Check out the 1989 figure.

And drinking happened everywhere.

Bars, hostess clubs where the girls

sometimes got $14,000 tips,

and of course, at the ever-popular karaoke lounge

at the site of a scene or two in "Earthquake Bird."

to give you some idea of how much people were going out,

in just one of those bubble years,

Japanese businessmen charged $50 billion

in food and drink to their companies' expense accounts.

But it wasn't just business.

The Japanese were known connoisseurs

of personal luxury items as well.

And as you can see, their fashion tended to be dialed up.

This suit is objectively the greatest costume in cinema.

One big trend for women at the time

was called (speaking in foreign language), body conscious,

tight, revealing, form-fitting clothing

that often made its way to a dance floor.

And those dance floors were epic.

Like Studio 54 in the '70s, they somehow captured the times.

People on the internet still swap stories about Juliana's,

a cavernous club in Tokyo that came to symbolize the bubble

and where basically anything could happen.

But like any really wild party, there's always a crash.

The stock bubble popped first,

causing a cascade of bankruptcies everywhere.

And just one year later, people had stopped buying

those extravagances they had once lusted over.

Then bad stuff started oozing out from under the glitz.

There were tales of inequality,

corporate corruption, and Yakuza infiltration.

And yes, there was even plain old murder,

although in real life it tended to happen over real estate.

It took Japan at least a decade

to recover from its hangover,

and even in 2019, the stock market

is nowhere near its 1989 height.

Still, even with all the lows that followed,

it's hard to watch this

(upbeat dance music)

and not want to be at one of the most extravagant,

expensive, extended parties the world has ever seen.

It didn't all happen in Ginza or Shinjuku.

The bubble remade the Japanese suburbs as well.

In the late 1980s, the Japanese had

over 1,000 golf courses under construction

and - this is my favorite part -

they build a dozen giant indoor ski domes.

Teiji's dilapidated "Mad Max"-style electrical substation,

I don't know, is bizarrely not that out of place

in the context of bubble-era architecture.

True to form, it's wild and loud and extravagant.

Sort of like "Transformers"

had a building kid with a castle.