showa genroku

[Anne McKnight]

That's a really interesting question.  I had heard the term, but I wonder if
it didn't resonate with the similar commemorative I've heard a lot of, the
"Jimmu miracle," i.e. 1964, year of Olympics, income-doubling, etc.  It seems
like public-policy, journalism rhetoric.   The Jimmu miracle seems to point to
the grand finale of a 'developmental' model, the superhero economy going
up-up-and-away--this is because it's touting the most flourishing GDP since
the beginning of what could be considered the first Japanese nation (Jimmu
being the mythical first emperor).

I looked up Showa genroku in the __Taishu bunka jiten__-it's very handy (ed.
Yoshimi Shunya and others).  The one I have came out in 1991, but maybe
there's another edition.  There's at least one fatter 2-volume edition.
Anyway, it says this word was coined in the wake of the Izanagi boom (1965-70)
in 1968, by former prime minister Fukuda.   Some of the familiar
characteristics are reprised:  throwaway society commences, consumerism booms,
the celebration of 100 years since Meiji with all its festivals all over
Tokyo.  The dark underside is represented by the costs/sacrifices of
modernization, such as industrial pollution, student unrest, etc.  Basically
it seems to encapsulate the dialectic of enlightenment and sacrifice, center
and periphery, past and future, the narrative which so often seems to drive
descriptions of the 60s, especially retrospective ones, which tend to be so
melancholic.

Maybe Showa genroku is the cultural component of the Jimmu miracle?  Why
Genroku out of all Edo, do you think--Imamura comes immediately to mind here?
What makes it so accessible or enviable as an object of nostalgia?  What do
you think of all the play of temporalities going on here?

Anne