The Economic Miracle revisited: social-status angst and ambivalence towards high-growth policies in 1960s Japanese youth film

Abstract

The Period of High Economic Growth has gone down in the Japanese collective memory as a golden era stoking sentiments of nostalgia. Ever since the downturn of the economy in the early 1990s, the Japanese have sought to recharge their dreams by looking back at a period supposedly permeated with an energetic and optimistic, forward-looking spirit. Yet, when we turn to contemporary films for testimony, we find this retrospective sentiment complicated by an ambivalent attitude towards ongoing social developments. This article focuses on three mainstream popular youth films – Foundry Town (Kyūpora no aru machi), Always Keep the Dream (Itsudemo yume o), The Sunshine Girl (Shitamachi no taiyō) – that share critical perspectives on issues pertaining to social class, economic inequality, and the attainability of worthwhile education. Set in ‘low town’ industrial districts in Tokyo and populated with unprivileged factory workers who went under the epithet of ‘golden eggs’, the films deliver a socio-political critique that ultimately questions the very desirability of the promises of social and spatial mobility built into high growth policies. It argues that the contemporary sararīman dream shared by the proverbial one hundred million Japanese in which everyone is able to join the ranks of elite white-collar employees, was disavowed by the films just as the plans started to unfold.