The Japan Jewelry Association says that Japan’s retail jewelry market plummteted by a double-digit figure to a record-low value of under 1 trillion yen last year. The Japanese jewelry sector is likely to shrink even further this year to below 900 billion yen due to the ongoing recession.

Japan’s jewelry market dropped by 11.8% in 2008 to 997 billion yen in comparison to the year before. The Japanese jewelry market plummeted as much as 70% from its peak of about 3 trillion yen in 1991 and is at its smallest since the survey conducted by the Japan Jewelry Association began in 1984.