Why Japanese Retro is Essential to the Human Race

Humans love retro, that black hole of groovy memories. Whether it’s a vintage half-hour sitcom or some comfort food topped with Hollandaise sauce, those of us old enough to carry satisfying memories of a bygone era have a never-ending craving for what used to be.

What else could explain the return of Showa Day, a Japanese festival that kicks off the Golden Week string of holidays each April 29? Originally, the day commemorated the birth of Hirohito (Emperor Showa) during his reign from 1926 through 1989. When the throne shifted to his son Akihito, the birthday party also moved, this time to December 23.

Yet people were already used a proper Golden Week that began with well wishes to the sitting monarch. So instead of letting the festivities simply fade away, the day-off was preserved and renamed to Greenery Day, one of Japan’s many opportunities to celebrate nature. Golden Week was saved, citizens continued to enjoy some well-deserved time off, and the environment earned additional acclaim.

That should have been the end of it. But in 2007, “Showa Day” returned to its former April 29 time slot, shoving Greenery Day over to May 4. The government defined the restored celebration as “a day to reflect on the Showa era, which achieved reconstruction after turbulent times, and to contemplate the future of the nation.” Not content with run-of-the-mill contemplation of flora and fauna, Japanese officials declared that being retro was essential to Japan’s future.

This year is the centennial of Hirohito’s birth, so Showa Retro is everywhere. TV shows countdown nearly forgotten songs of parents and grandparents. Wood-paneled and stained-glass siphon-coffee shops serve old favorites like Napolitan spaghetti, melon soda, and molasses-topped custard pudding.

Retro often gets a bad rap, with taunts of being “stuck in the past” and “backward.” Handing out some time-tested advice to a Millennial might earn you an “OK Boomer” in response, although I have just been told that even this quip is archaic.

There is great value in ruminating on that old stuff. In the sciences, this is called “standing on the shoulders of giants.” In the realms of philosophy and literature, it’s “The Great Conversation.” Of course, there are some things that should not be regurgitated. Gilligan’s Island was never good television. The presence of mixed vegetables in Jell-O likely set civilization back decades. We can admit these failures and still extract what was good about the past. Useful lessons for our lives today can be obtained not only from the trauma of World War II, but also from the recovery that followed.

Consider Japan’s current population drop. During the Showa era, Japanese families had enough children to maintain and even grow the population, fully meeting their labor needs. Today, Japan struggles demographically, with its birthrate and median age moving in depressing directions. What was it about the season of Showa that made everyone want to have babies? You think having children in the twenty-first century is difficult? Try raising a family while simultaneously rebuilding a fire-bombed Tokyo. If we meditate on those days, we might discover something that will help us deal with our current demographic concerns, or our economic difficulties, or our complex international relations.

We live in an era where we expect enough money and enough tech to solve every problem. But real value comes from the human spirit and its ability to apply past successes—and even failures—to future projects. Maybe that’s why almost nothing got invented or even written down during the tens of thousands of years that humans wandered the planet before the Bronze Age. There simply wasn’t much to be nostalgic about, and therefore less material on which to dream about the future.

Retro is not fuddy-duddy but instead is a constant source of inspiration. So slip on some bell-bottoms, fire up an Andy Williams LP, grab a plate of deviled eggs, and cogitate on the daily lives of those who lived during those crazy post-war Showa years.