Photo/Illutration Kazutoshi Hando (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Perhaps portending a tumultuous era ahead, unseasonably severe winter rain and a thunderstorm struck the Hayama imperial villa in Kanagawa Prefecture where the gravely ill Emperor Yoshihito was lying on his deathbed in December 1926.

Yoshihito, posthumously honored as Emperor Taisho, died in the early hours of Dec. 25, 1926. He was 47.

Thus dawned the Showa Era, the first year of which was only one week long.

The era name of Showa was proposed by Masuzo Yoshida (1866-1941), then an official at the Ministry of the Imperial Household.

Yoshida drew his inspiration from a line in a major work of ancient Chinese literature, which went to the effect, “All people are enlightened, and all nations are in harmony.”

This reflected Japan’s readiness to pledge for world peace. But Japan itself broke it later.

In what can only be lamented as further irony of history, Yoshida himself became involved in the drafting of the Imperial Rescript on the Declaration of War against the United States and Britain in 1941.

I once heard from Kazutoshi Hando (1930-2021), a journalist who specialized in the history of the Showa Era, about what he termed a “40-year historical perspective.”

Hando set the year 1865 as the start of modern Japan, when the imperial court dropped its anti-foreign policy and agreed to open Japan’s doors to the rest of the world.

From there, Hando theorized, Japan underwent its high and low points every 40 years. There was the victorious Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and then the defeat in World War II in 1945.

If I may apply this formula to my own interpretation of history, Japan made uphill economic advances over the first 40 years after the war, crested with the asset-inflated bubble economy and then began a 40-year descent; the result of which is where we are now in 2025.

If that is correct, we should have hit bottom already. But unfortunately, it doesn’t feel that way.

In Tokyo’s Nagatacho, the seat of conservative politics, the denizens are apparently still basking in the imaginary afterglow of the long-gone Showa Era. The government is planning to host a ceremony next year to mark the 100th year of Showa.

Hando used to say that the history of Showa could teach us many lessons, but that we would have to be willing to understand history correctly.

“Without that willingness, history won’t tell us anything,” he warned.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 25

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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