This article is based on a visit made on Friday, 18 May 2018.
Previously on Sekai Ichi, I visited the Sakurayama Hachiman shrine, home to
a museum about the city's semi-annual festivals. Its location proved to be a fine starting point for walking into another of Takayama's most famous attractions, the old town. However, on the way there, we stopped at a museum offering a more recent slice of history: the Takayama Showa-kan (高山昭和館) museum.
What is
Showa? In Japan, the reign of each Emperor is given a unique title, which is also bestowed upon that Emperor himself after his death. For example, the reign that started this year (2019) is called the
Reiwa era (令和, lit. 'fair peace'). The
Showa era (昭和, lit. 'enlightened peace'), then, was the period ruled over by Emperor Hirohito, lasting from 1926 to 1989. This holds the record for the longest reign of a Japanese Emperor, and indeed, much happened to Japan during these 64 years, some of it infamously unfortunate. But most Japanese who were alive back then associate
Showa more strongly with its post-war half, from the mid-1950s on, when the country embraced democracy and capitalism, and its economy grew at a meteoric rate.
The halls of this museum are done up to resemble a cityscape that may have been seen in 1955 or so, and are lined with rooms which re-create different kinds of homes or businesses. The car seen above is a
Daihatsu Midget, a three-wheeled mini-truck first manufactured in 1957. They came in one-seater and two-seater varieties; the model in this museum is the latter, and you can even sit inside it.
This room is the living quarters behind a general store; the store's counters are out of frame. It would be interesting to compare these to the model homes in, say, the
Fukugawa Edo Museum. Maybe this is just one room out of many in the house, maybe it isn't. Living standards had certainly improved since the Edo period, but space has always been precious in urban Japan. One thing's for sure: there was a wider variety of stuff available in the Showa period. The TV in back plays a loop of vintage shows, and there is a
shogi (a Japanese strategy game which evolved from chess) board which these two 21st-century ladies are happily chatting over.
Moving on to the restaurant, and -- hel-lo, whom do we have up there...?
I'll try to ignore that temptation, and instead take a closer look at the food models adorning the restaurant's shopfront, which is common in Japan even today. The advent of plastic manufacturing gave restaurateurs the ability share their menus beyond the barriers of language. I, and many others, I'm sure, are thankful for that.
One of the rooms you can enter from the main hall is an appliance store. Electric appliances like these became status symbols of the post-war Japanese. Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister from 2001-2006, compared the most sought-after home goods of a given time to the three treasures that make up the
Imperial Regalia of Japan; for example, the washing machine, refrigerator, and black-and-white TV. I mentioned this comparison in detail before, on my article on the
Edo Tokyo Museum.
Next door is a toy store. I described the evolution of Japanese toy trends in another article, on the
Arima Toys and Automata Museum. The collection on display here encapsulates the transition period I described then.
The second floor offers more to explore, such as rooms from a private home and a school. I honestly doubt that every student in a given class would use their own typewriter, but having them here does help to show the evolution of technology that took place during this time.
Speaking of technology, video games also helped define the late Showa period. Japanese arcade games like
Space Invaders and
Pac-Man became worldwide phenomena in the late '70s and early '80s, and Nintendo and Sega both launched their first home consoles in 1983. Here, on the second floor of the Showa-kan, you can play on a couple of Nintendo's Famicom and Super Famicom systems. (The latter was actually launched in 1990, after the Showa period ended, but... eh, close enough.)
However, an even more widespread pasttime in Japan, both then and now, is
pachinko (パチンコ). To play, you shoot little metal marbles into a vertical board lined with pegs. The balls bounce around these pegs on their way down, and if they fall into the right holes, you'll get additional balls to keep playing with. It bears resemblance to pinball, but the player's only control is how rapidly the balls are shot into play. The balls you earn can be exchanged for prizes, and even though most gambling is illegal in Japan, there is a booming grey market of exchanging those prizes back for cash. At the Showa-kan, you can try out some old-style pachinko machines for free. No prizes, though. As for the real thing, pachinko parlours are very widespread across Japan, but the experience of being in one is extremely loud, like a casino on steroids. I think I'll stick to video game centres if that's all the same to you.
Or, I could just go out and visit Takayama's old town. Join me there, next time on Sekai Ichi!
Hours: Open from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. No regular closing days.
Cost: ¥800.
Address: 6 Shimo-Ichinomachi, Takayama-shi, Gifu-ken 〒506-0858
Access: From the Takayama Bus Centre, take the Machinami loop bus to Betsu-in Temple (別院前) (¥100). The Counterclockwise route takes 11 minutes to get to this stop, while the Clockwise route takes 21 minutes. From the bus stop, head west, downhill along the main road, and take the third right, at the traffic light. The museum will soon be on your left.
You can also reach the museum in about 15 minutes on foot from Takayama Station. Turn left out of the station's East Exit, then take the second right at the traffic light. Continue on up the main road for about 850m (½ mile). After crossing the river, turn left at the next traffic light. The museum will soon be on your left.
Website:
(English) (Japanese)
