what was japan like in the 60s
>>18253529Japan in the 1960s was a nation in full-speed transformation — erupting from postwar ruin into economic miracle, urban modernization, and social unrest. Here's a breakdown of its most defining features across key domains:--- 1. Economy: The “Japanese Miracle”The 1960s were the core decade of Japan’s postwar economic boom.GDP growth averaged over 10% per year — an unmatched pace in the industrialized world.Major exports: cars, electronics, textiles, machinery.Companies like Toyota, Sony, Honda, and Panasonic went global.The government followed MITI-guided capitalism — tight coordination between state and industry.By the late 1960s, Japan was already being called the “workshop of the world”.--- 2. Urbanization and ModernizationCities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya exploded in size and infrastructure.Tokyo hosted the 1964 Olympics, symbolizing Japan's re-entry into the world as a peaceful, modern state.The Shinkansen (bullet train) debuted in 1964 — a stunning symbol of modernization.Highways, department stores, neon lights — a rapid Westernization of daily life.--- 3. Education and Youth CultureA highly educated workforce emerged due to compulsory schooling and intense university competition.Youth rebellion appeared mid-decade, mirroring the West but with its own flavor.Universities were hotbeds of protest, especially toward the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo) and Vietnam War.Despite rebellion, most young Japanese still entered corporate life and accepted the conformity of the system.--- 4. U.S. Influence and Cold War PositionJapan was a key American ally in Asia during the Cold War.Hosted U.S. military bases — deeply controversial with the left.The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was renewed in 1960 amidst massive protests — the Anpo Protests.Japan stayed officially pacifist (Article 9 of its Constitution), but leaned into economic power over military force.
5. Social Pressure and ConformityThe price of growth was intense conformity:Lifetime employment in big companies.Rigorous education and entrance exams.Gender roles: women often pushed into domestic life.Suicide, depression, and alcohol use quietly rose.The phrase “karoshi” (death by overwork) started to emerge — though it wouldn't become infamous until the 1980s.--- 6. Culture and Identity CrisisA clash between traditional Japanese identity and modern consumerism played out everywhere:Samurai films and Noh theatre vs. Beatles and miniskirts.Zen Buddhism vs. materialist “salaryman” culture.Family duty vs. Western individualism.Art house directors like Ozu, Kurosawa, and Oshima explored alienation, hypocrisy, and societal pressure.--- 7. Political UnrestLeftist groups, student radicals, and labor unions were extremely active.Protests targeted:U.S. bases and the Vietnam WarCorporate exploitationThe Emperor’s symbolic statusWhile Japan remained democratic and capitalist, there was a deep undercurrent of rebellion beneath its shiny economic surface.---Summary:Japan in the 1960s was a paradox:Technologically forward, yet spiritually uncertainEconomically booming, but socially rigidWesternized, yet searching for identityPeaceful, yet traumatized by its pastThe country reinvented itself in this decade — laying the foundations for the Japan we know today, while also planting the seeds of future social alienation and identity crisis that would bloom in the 1980s and beyond.Let me know if you want a cultural deep dive (music, fashion, TV, etc.) or how life looked for the average Japanese worker or youth.
>>18253538Thank you Chatgpt
>>18253541Thanks captain obvious
poor
>>18253541So, wanna continue with how the first cracks began to show in the 70s and 80s?
>>18253543Yeah bro nobody ever use Chah Gee Pee Tea before. You're the first one. Now dump some pictures,that's why I posted in here.
Daido MORIYAMAEarly summer for the young 1967
YOOOOOUUUUUU OOOOOONNLY LIVE TWICE, OR SO IT SEEMSONE LIFE FOR YOURSELF AAAND ONE FOR YOUR DREAMS
Tokagakudo Music Hall Tokyo designed by architect Kenji IMAI
>>182536331966
>>18253529Japan's "cleaness" is from government destroying their traditional culture.Japanese uses to piss everywhere in the streets and litter garbage as part of their culture, but the Japanese government forced and re-engineered its people to stop in the 1960s to please western tourists for the Olympics in the 1960s (same decade many fake concrete castles were built for western tourists) it began forcing elderly Japanese to pick up garbage.Japanese streets and train lines used to smell like rubbish, piss and shit.https://x.com/malecsandram/status/1511650585690447874>Turn out that hosting the 1964 Olympic Games completely kickstarted the transformation of Japan and Tokyo from a sewage smelling city with rubbish all over to the hyper polite, hyper clean, hyper cosmopolitan place we know today.https://x.com/MacSingularity/status/1576955688395636738>A long time ago, during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the Sumida River smelled foul and was in a dirty state, so as a temporary measure to improve it, clean water was flowed.https://x.com/NewbieJapan/status/1654060267003691008>after the Olympics of 1964 foreign people complained that the Japanese were tossing their trash in the rivers and ditches everywhere. Tokyo was dirty.>That little bit of shame in the media produced the clean Tokyo we appreciate and JP fans picking up trash in the stadiumsIt was easy for poor Chinese men working as peddlers or labourers to groom random Japanese girls in the 1920s and 1930s.https://desuarchive.org/his/thread/17164434/#q17164434Japan also used to export more child teenage prostitutes to foreign men than Thailand in the Meiji era (karayuki san) with Japanese girls from Africa to the US and Canada.Japan only cleaned up its image and GDP after the Tokyo Olympics
Shizuoka Tower Tokyo architect Kenzo TANGE 1967
Shizuoka Tower Tokyo by architect Kenzo TANGE 1967
>>18253529grim, their working conditions were the equivalent of 90's Chinese sweatshops. Most of the workforce consisted of educated but dirt poor people.
>>18253529>>18253644Minamata diseaseMinamoto disease?
Tamotsu Yato (矢頭保) photographer working in Japan from the mid-60s to the early 70s
>>18253653Photos by Tamotsu Yato (矢頭保)
Death by hanging 1968 movie poster
The height of rioting and political assassinations compared to any other decade due to political corruption and western political meddling.It began an age of delinquency and a rise of anti American sentiment.
>>18253672
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>>18253672japan is america's bitch
>>18253678>US diplomat and nephew of General McAurthur as well as the US press secretary James Hagerty deliberately provoked an international incident by ordering that the car be driven into a large crowd of protesters>The protesters surrounded the car, cracking its windows, smashing its tail lights, and rocking it back and forth for more than an hour while standing on its roof, chanting anti-American slogans and singing protest songs.>Ultimately, MacArthur and Hagerty had to be rescued by a US Marines military helicopter
>>18253675
This is the era when anime trope we're familiar with was in its infancy. Inb4>erm Ackshirley, Japanese animation already existed in the late 18000sRead what I said again
THE BEST JAPANESE MUSIC WAS MADE IN THE NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES IN THE FORM OF ENKA, AND KAYOUKYOKU; THEY TOOK THEIR TRADITIONAL MUSIC FROM THE XVI, AND XVII, CENTURIES, AND INTEGRATED IT WITH BOLERO; BOLERO IS THE BEST MUSICAL GENRE; BOLERO IS ULTRAVERSATILE; IT ELEVATES AND IMPROVES ANYTHING.JAPANESE MUSIC BECAME ACOUSTICAL DRIVEL IN THE NINETEEN HUNDRED EIGHTIES, WHEN THEY ABANDONED THE BOLERO INFLUENCE, AND STARTED IMITATING UNITEDSTATIAN FUNK POP, AND R&B, SPAWNING THE ABOMINATION CALLED «CITYPOP».https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPcfJMNiEoshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huESFs9fqoIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX_0SadQtO0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4UI_gGTCGUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfG8LiXjmkQ
>>18253653All these homoerotic photos from the 60s but not one Mishima? For shame.
>>18253529SOVLful, experiencing unprecedented levels of economic growth and hopeful for the future. The first Shinkansen and the Tokyo Olympics both took place in that decade
>>18253678Okay, Chang
>>18253529No anime.So probably boring.
>>18253844I'M NOT EVEN JOKING, I WANT TO SMASH YOUR FUCKING HEAD RIGHT OPEN UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS OF IT AND I WONT HAVE TO LIVE WITH YOUR EXISTNCE YOU WASTE OF FUCKING FLESH
>>18253841Japan started building its fake concrete castles in the 1960s for western touristshttps://twitter.com/namatsuu/status/1671517735979720706>As I'm graduating I thought I'd share some thoughts on my thesis topic. It was about #Japanese #castles as parts of #CulturalHeritage, focusing on recent castle reconstructions. Here is a visual recap of my thesis, which included survey and interview data from around #Japan. 1/
>>18255144https://twitter.com/namatsuu/status/1671519848289935361>Sadly, most of these castles were lost during the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800's. For 300 years castles had dominated the townscape, but they were seen as obsolete feudal relics in contrast to modern, Western architecture, and dozens were ruthlessly demolished. 6/
>>18255146https://twitter.com/namatsuu/status/1671520541356834819>After the war there was a so-called castle boom, during which 50+ castles were reconstructed. But due building regulations and values of the time, these were hastily built out of concrete, making them blatantly ahistorical. Most of the existing tenshu are made of concrete. 8/
>>18255149https://twitter.com/namatsuu/status/1671520541356834819After the war there was a so-called castle boom, during which 50+ castles were reconstructed. But due building regulations and values of the time, these were hastily built out of concrete, making them blatantly ahistorical. Most of the existing tenshu are made of concrete. 8/https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1631253085283663872THIS. So Japanese companies builds a castle and it's "fake", but the "classic ones" that are really just reconstructions? In all my tours they were presented as the original ones. This would be such a blasphemy in Europe lolhttps://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1631582335568052225Kinkaku (golden wall temple) for example, it was only the 3rd time or so I went there that the guide told us it was a reconstruction. The Osaka castle main tower, the famous one, is from the 30s apparently (as in, 1930s). And Nagoya castle is new from WWII.https://twitter.com/UnseenJapanSite/status/1631202910762835968>A fake castle in Akabira, Hokkaido. During the excesses of the bubble era, multiple entities with excess cash on their hands built such castles. This one was a showroom and production facility for a doll company.https://twitter.com/CJV_en/status/1539126159421878273An awesome shot of what appears to be Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Tokyo, through the green summer leaves!The pagoda was first erected in 942 and since then it has been destroyed and rebuilt several timesThe current pagoda was rebuilt in 1973#Japan #Photographyhttps://twitter.com/ClintonGodart/status/1721014672726667271Did you know the famous Kaminarimon at Sensōji has a plate honoring Panasonic? The gate burned down in 1865, only rebuilt in 1960. It was supported by Panasonic's founder, Matsushita. He was friends with Shimizutani Kyōjun, Sensōji's priest, who prayed to Kannon for his health1/2
>>18254451Yup that definitely hits the mark there. I don't know it would be that easy
>>18253529cagada
Janny are brown subhuman
>>18253732The 80s were a shitty decade for everything everywhere. Why were they so shit?
>>18253732>JAPANESE MUSIC BECAME ACOUSTICAL DRIVEL IN THE NINETEEN HUNDRED EIGHTIES, WHEN THEY ABANDONED THE BOLERO INFLUENCE, AND STARTED IMITATING UNITEDSTATIAN FUNK POP, AND R&B, SPAWNING THE ABOMINATION CALLED «CITYPOP».Seriously, this crap is horrible. So cheesy and soulless. Why do zoomers like this shit so much?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBAgOk51Gt0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPS9dyom-vMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0F2KF_0W3A
>>18257497That's why the Japanese themselves pronounce it "shitty pop".
