What was it like to live in Japan in the 1970's?

Question

What was it like to live in Japan in the 1970's?

Answer 1

Since Japan is the fifty-first state of the US (In case you don't know yet), I would guess there was basically not much difference between what it was like to live in that period in the US and in Japan.

It was the time when Japan was starting to become a real economic superpower as it is now, after the super economic boom in the preceding decades, and despite the oil shock (oil crisis); in the preceding decade, GDP and the average household income had more than doubled in a relatively brief period of time.

The noteworthy events of the period were: Harakiri suicide by Yukio Mishima (1970); Osaka EXPO (1970); the return of Okinawa to Japan administration from the US (1972); the resumption of diplomatic ties with China (1972); the Asama-sanso incident (1972), a shootout between the police and radical leftist ex-students in the mountains that lasted about a week, remembered by most elderly Japanese as one of the most unforgettable incidents that ever happened in the post-war Japan (the first half of the period was characterized by the aftermath of the student movement in the late 60s, as it was in the US); the oil crisis; the coming to light of pollution-caused diseases and its victims; the Narita airport struggle, also the leftist movement against the construction of the Narita international airport; and so on and on and on.

As a side note, Japan was still more heavily dependent on heavy industries like shipbuilding, steel making, etc. than it is now. It was in the 80's that Japanese cars really started to get into the US market. The population engaged in agriculture was 1 out of every 10 people in the mid 70'; in 1945, when Japan surrendered to the Allied Nations, it was more than half the entire population. Now it's less than 1 out of every 25 people. People in rural areas, where there were proportionatey larger agrigultural populations, became the temporary workforce for the booming construction demand in urban areas like Tokyo and Osaka, by migrating in large numbers to the cities during the winter fallow period (called Dekasegi). Now they no longer have to thanks to LDP-led pork-barreling and local construction work, something often condemned by some of the Japanologists out there.



All in all it was a much gloomier time than today, though some might say it was better than today because people still believed in the 'rosy future.'

Source(s): Iwanami booklet "From high economic growth to an economic giant."