ABSTRACT
During the 1980s Japan's two dozen life insurance companies came to symbolize the country's raw financial power. By contrast, in early 1999 the life insurance industry was in crisis, with declining revenues and mounting losses, a victim of Japan's postbubble financial decline and the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) desperate need to rescue the banking system by pursuing a superlow interest rate policy. At mid-1999 the BOJ's "zero interest rate policy" was finally buoying the Japanese stock market, and rising values of stock portfolios were beginning to buoy the spirits of the recently demoralized life insurers. But the damage done in this industry, and its many structural and market competitiveness problems, would not easily or quickly be repaired.
