E DGINGTON DW (1994) The geography of endaka: industrial transformation and regional employment changes in Japan, 1986–1991, Reg. Studies 28, 521–535. The paper assesses the implications of Japan's severe currency realignment of the mid-1980s (endaka) for national and regional employment trends. Disaggregated data are used to show that the sudden deterioration in the Japanese labour market following 1985, and its subsequent recovery up to 1991, had unequal spatial outcomes. The adverse effects of endaka, and the impact of the subsequent economic ‘bubble'based on asset price inflation, were highly differentiated between the sectors of the economy and also between the regions of Japan. It is argued that from 1986 to 1991 a new geography of Japan's economy and labour markets emerged at the prefectural level, comprising increasing service sector jobs in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, strong growth of production jobs in Tokai (Chukyo) and Tohoku, and a much slower recovery in employment opportunities for Japan's peripheral regions.