In the late 1980s, Japan was awash in seemingly unlimited wealth and rising. In 1991 the same lethal combination of risky loans, inflated stocks, and real estate speculation that created this "bubble economy" caused it to burst, plunging the country into its worst recession since World War II. New Zealand–born architect Thomas Daniell arrived in Japan at the dawn of a turbulent decade marked by an extraordinary confluence of catastrophes, including the devastating Kobe earthquake and the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

"After the Crash" is an anthology of essays that draw on Daniell’s firsthand observations of the built environment and architectural culture that emerged from the economically sober post-bubble period of the 1990s.