Japan's "Showa Era" of cultural greatness - did we have one? 

Yet another instance of Japan and the UK being oddly comparable.

I think a lot of people in North America feel like 9/11 was the end of our "Showa Era". You see a lot of people cite it as what they feel like a turning point in our culture.

Hirohito is a weird mirror image of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie. Where Hirohito was the figurehead of Japan's darkest days whose reputation was remediated, Selassie was one of the first noble figures of resilience during the war who was (in my opinion) unjustly disrespected and cast down by his society post war. Imagine if someone like Charles De Gaulle was overthrown then died from a suspiciously botched surgery then hastily buried under a toilet.

I would argue that early home computers were an extension of middle class luxury, and it wasn't until the expansion of the Internet to home computers in the early 90s that they began the transition from luxury items to a core part of the household.

Nostalgia is a very strong emotion, even people like me in there mid 20s are hyper nostalgic for the 2000s from when we were growing up

I'm 18, I wasn't alive in any of these years, but whenever I hear about the recent past it always strikes me that 1984 specifically comes up very conspicuously often, and not just because people were aware of the Orwell book. I definitely agree that it seems like a very pivotal year that could be used to mark the end of one era and the beginning of another.

I think the modern era we're living in today starts in 2012. Cell phones connected to the internet existed well before the iPhone (Remember the blackberry?). The iPhone was revealed in 2007, but was very limited in connectivity. 2012 was when phones using 4G data became widely adopted in the US, allowing for the EXPLOSION in smartphones. Without the smartphone explosion of 2012 there's no BLM, short form video, Angry Birds, video essays, VLOGs, and selfies among other cultural revolutions.

For years, I understood the Godzilla series to be separated into "Showa" and "Heisei" eras, but had no idea that they were connected to the reigns of Emperors.

I’d keep 1989 as the pivotal year of inflections. The Showa Emperor died and Japan reached its economic apogee. The Berlin Wall fell and Europe was finally being reunited. The USSR started to unravel in that year. All the nasty Cold War “hot” wars in undeveloped nations sputtered out as money was no longer available to keep them going. This peace finally reigned in large parts of the world. The golden age of the 1990s was just getting started in the US, with American triumphalism a dominant theme in US and global culture. It seems like a great year to commemorate the end of an era.

I must say, 90s and 80s nostalgia seems to have had something of a comeback in the UK, particularly with the miserable cost of living crisis

In Poland we also split modern history before and after 1989 - end of communism and beginning of democracy was watershed moment for culture, politics, economy, etc.

I mean, if we're talking about how an era ended when computers gained more mainstream relevance as PCs, I think that the period between 1945 and 1984 (1985 if we want to do a solid, round 40 years) should be named something among the lines of "Post-war Analogue Tech era", at least if we're looking at technology and the impact it has on pop culture around that time given the predominance of things like vinyl records, cassettes, TVs, cars, videocassettes and so on With this definition, we can maybe call the years that came the "Digital era" and maybe we can slice this era into smaller bits depending on the different technology advancements, such as the introduction of tactile screens or AI into the mainstream

I think it's no coincidence that just like the Showa, the Victorian era came right after the bloodiest period the world have seen (Napoleonic wars). Millions of people gave their life in battle in each of those periods because they knew that winning those wars means dictating the future of global culture, economy, politics centuries forward.

Back when I was a history major in the 1980s, the favored new hypothesis professors liked to throw around was that World War 1 and World War 2 were essentially the same war, with an extended time out between them. And this does make sense, as the issues that gave rise to the first war were still largely unresolved by the start of the second; the second war effectively eliminated *most* of them, and those it didn’t (such as European Imperialism) pretty much withered and died as a consequence of the way things changed during the war. While it’s not 100% accurate, I’ve always liked looking at it this way since it tends to emphasize the interbellum years, which generally don’t get enough attention, and I feel like when you’re looking at world-altering events that utterly irretrievably end the old status quo, it’s best to see them as part of a continuity, rather than discrete events. So, yeah, I think you’re right about how the future will look at the first half of the 20th century

"Hirohito the Peaceful" lol

The emperor method of dating is still present on Japanese currency, you can easily find it on any yen coins

I feel like the death of Harambe could be the start of the modern era. Everything just seems to have gone downhill from there.

1984 feels a bit too early as the "computer year". I'm surprised to learn that CDs existed in 1984, cause I don't think I saw a CD until the 90s. Certainly we used casette tapes and records to listen to music for quite a while. Every computer and every videogame console I encountered continued to use cartridges or floppy disks for several years after 1984. I do remember the transition from 5 1/4 floppy disks to 3 1/2 floppy disks, that happened in the late 80s, but I'm not old enough to remember 8 inch floppy disks. And at any rate, the storage format frankly isn't that big of a deal; if you need to insert 10 disks, you insert 10 disks, it gets the job done. And...I haven't used a CD in years. 1983-1984 was also the two year period of the US videogame console collapse, where nearly every retailer stopped stocking console videogames, which wouldn't really end until 1985 when the NES was released. Which to me is another strike against 1984 as the year. I would want to go either earlier than this electronic recession (1982) or later (1985+). I'm not sure what year or what technology to pin this on, but two I can think of are substantially later. The development and public release of the world wide web (1991) --specifically http. a few college professors sent emails over internet for years before 1991, but http was game changing. Alternatively, the development and production of the blue LED (1993) which is now used in every TV and every computer monitor--laptops and smartphones would not be able to produce blue or white without this LED, they would only be able to produce green, red, and yellow. Screens that could produce all colours would not be portable, they would still be the big boxy monitors.

1:59 JJ, I really hope you will make a video on this topic, the pros and cons of nostalgia. As many of our age group are getting older, there's a natural tendency to want to revisit the "good old days" in sepia-toned memories - but I think there is a not so good, even potentially hazardous possibility of people getting stuck in that mindset, that the past was obviously better, and live their lives in the present pining for a past they can't ever have again. It seems like, taken to the extreme, this is a potential source of depression and sadness for many of our age group. Another very interesting and related topic I would love to see you cover is why nostalgia pulls at our emotions so strongly - yet commercial products giving us the things we're pining for seem to often fail because no one buys them. A couple of examples in terms of media are MTV Classic and Nickelodeon's various attempts to sell their old shows as a separate block/network (The Splat/Nick Rewind, etc.). In short, it seems that people want to be nostalgic about a thing, not to actually experience that thing itself again. I really think that would be a very interesting topic to explore.

I'm an elder zoomer... I think you hit the nail on the head choosing 1984 as the threshold for the Era. For me, the correlation to George Orwell's novel of the same name draws a somewhat eerie yet thought-provoking similarity to today's cultural paradigm. As far as what's happening today... beats the hell outta me 😂

I always saw the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902, as the last Victorian war. And not just because it literally was. The goal of the Great War and the tactics used were too far removed from the colonial conflicts emblematic of the Victorian age to draw a comparison. I see the Victorian era as Britain increasingly isolating itself from affairs outside of empire, culminating in Lord Salisbury’s “splendid isolation” in the latter part of the 19th century.

What you were saying about Queen Victoria's lifespan in relation to the distinct culture of the era named after her was interesting. We have this collective habit of fixing historical figures into a particular iteration of themselves, and in doing so projecting certain values and broad concepts we associate with their time periods. This can lead us to make the mistake of dismissing their younger or twilight bookending years, almost as if they were different people, and by extension dismissing how much our popular associations/assumptions with time periods were still developing and even contested back at the time. I always thought Churchill was a good example of this retrospective idolisation. He's overwhelmingly remembered as the man who defended Britain during WW2 and highly revered by the average English person, but I think a lot of my fellow Brits sometimes forget that public opinion of the guy during his life was pretty divisive. They also tend to forget that he was in the sixties at the outbreak of WW2, and he was perceived as something of a political anachronism in that period, a product of unabashedly imperialist late Victorian sensibilities and actually quite an anathema to the political consensus of his contemporaries.

1991, although I might be pulling a JJ here and just going with my birth year. The USSR and Yugoslavia collapsed, the World Wide Web was launched, the first Gulf War led to a reorganising of geopolitics around the Middle East, and apartheid in South Africa was repealed. Two seemingly minor events compared to those, but that set the tone of the year, are the death of Freddie Mercury, an icon of the music of the past few decades, and the discovery of the first planet outside our Solar System, symbolising a new scientific era as well. It's hard to pick a specific year though, as the collapse of communism, the rise of instant communication, and a growing awareness of climate change all seemed to be a gradual late 80s-early 90s thing.

As someone from the U.S.A. who grew up in the 2000's and 2010's, I'd say the current era started somewhere within the years of 2007-2009. You're spot on with the introduction of smart phones. But I'd also point to the political therefore cultural changes of those years as well. Namely the economic... thing of 2008 and the election of Barack Obama. How accurate that is to the impact of culture outside the U.S. is uncertain to me however.

Oh my god the magitek factory theme drop just made my day.

the 90s are definitely near their peak nostalgia right now

8:27 His camera shifts slightly at the exaxt moment he talks about shifting the dates on the timeline. This is the film making techniques that make his video award-winning.

I feel like the 20th century truly ended on september 11th 2001.

I think people of the future will have nostalgia for our current time in history because this is the earliest moment in which we have things like youtube and social media. What did the common person think of the first Buster Keaton silent film? What were everyday people's reactions as the world wars started? We have written accounts, but not nearly the volume of information that we have now and they aren't all saved in one place like on the internet. People in the future will be able to watch videos from long dead content creators as if they just released them yesterday.

The internet age works for me. Of everything that's happened over the past several decades, that is the biggest change point, reflected in so many aspects of our world.

I was born in 1997. To many people, 2007 is just before the financial crisis. To me, it's when the first Transformers movie came out, and that somehow turned into an era marker for my memory.

Upon seeing this video, I think one thing I would like to see JJ do is make an analysis video of what the years between the end of the Victorian era and World War Two added to American culture.

Post-war era was really divided in 2 sections: pre oil crisis (until 1973) and the technological age (1970-2001). 9/11 was really the end of all the things people are nostalgic about the 20th century. I noticed insecurity, polarization and internet cultures took root in the aftermath of this.

Personally, for the United States, I think the post-war years lasted from 1945-1973, as the oil crash destroyed the keyensian economy, beginning a short era from 1973-1980 with stagflation before the economy was replaced with more moneterist throught in 1981, leading to the neo-liberal era of 1981-2008, before the recession led us to the post recession era of 2008-2020, which, of course, ended when covid hit.

Born in Showa 37 (1963), I lived through the rise of the computers and Internet. I would argue that the Internet had a bigger influence in changing society. In the beginning, the PC was just seen as a tool/appliance like a TV. It wasn't until the Internet started growing (around 1995) that society really started to change.

Such a nice video on the comparison between two incredibly influential eras of history 👍

would be interested to see a video on Meiji era nostalgia which is most comparable to Victorian era. In Meiji era Japan first modernised and became imperial power.

The 1980 election of Reagan I think acts as a solid ending date. Really marked the start of the new Conservative Party and has the bonus as occurring roughly at the same time as the computer becoming mainstream. I’m not sure how well this time market applies to other western countries though-Thatcher was elected in 1979 so it might fit well with the Brits.

From what I've seen people in the UK perceive the Victorian era as predating her actual ascension, not proceeding. I've seen a lot of people view it as 1815 to 1914, less so defined by the Industrial Revolution than Britain's time as the global hegemon. But I suppose that fits into your views on global vs national contexts. (It's also pretty interesting how war and conflict influence how we remember certain eras more than pretty much any other factor.)

Its interesting how the British went from defining eras based on their monarchs to not really doing that anymore. I think it reflects the British view of royalty in general.

J.J.: I don't know how you can say the "era" after the Showa Age has "not proven itself to be consequential." I would assert that the rise of the Internet and then the WWW in the mid-1990s changed EVERYTHING. Gates, Besos and Jobs realized before most of us that it would change communication, commerce and government -- and it has. The post-Showa Era has hardly been inconsequential. It has literally shrunk the planet.

We all know that the end of the world was 1999 and we’re all now living a postmodern simulation of what we think the world is in the 21st century - but not what it actually is…

I've pretty much fallen into the habit of referring to this time period as the "Cold War Era." It seems that everything from the Truman Doctrine to the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1947-1991) was part of that era that we have a strange nostalgia for. I also sometimes call it the "Baby Boomer Era," although that may not be as accurate or as clearly defined, or I just sometimes call it the "second half of the twentieth century."

I actually think 1989 was the last "True year of the 20th century" and a lot of the cultural and technological trends like home computers , the strength of "Black culture" & multiculturalism and the dominance of the United States in terms of international prestige and power and the start a true global "Pop culture" didn't start until the 1990s. While the 1980s were more analogue and homogeneous and diffrent countries having diffrent tastes and cultural items was still a thing before economic globalization lead to a lot more countries sharing things material things. The computer revolution really didn't take off until the 1990s as well.

I want to call our current age the "So-Me era" - the age of social Media.

Similarly to Hirohito dying in January, Victoria dying in 1901 means you can basically generalize the entire 19th century (Give or take a few decades at the beginning) as Victorian and the coming centuries with a clear post-Victorian division. In fact, I was taking part in a quiz and one of the questions was how many 20th century British monarchs have there been and Victoria was omitted to make her death date cleanly align with the centuries I suppose (as well as Edward VIII but that's understandable).

The Japanese imperial era name system is still widely used on official documents like laws, newspapers, calendars, legal documents, and even coins. So it wasn't phased out entirely.

fun fact, *Shōwa Day* (昭和の日) is annual public holiday in Japan held on April 29. It honors the birthday of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito).

I feel like the elizabethan era is a good era similar to the showa era, starting post-war in the 50s, and including the late 20th century and ending right at the start of AI advancements and reaching the limits in technology. also, during her reign, many changes in the world such as social norms, cultural values, and the complete fall of the british empire occurred during her reign

J.J., have you read Eric Hobsbawm's books about the long 19th (1789-1914) and the short 20th (1914-1989) centuries? Some of the eras you mention are similar to the ones present in his works, so I think it's worth it to take a look at them.

Another award winning video!

You call the emperor a war criminal, yet he was never convicted of war crimes. The transition from Japan being an enemy to a close US ally is a fascinating topic, with lots of different angles. And yes, we may have let criminals away it we’ll never know.

There's a case to be made for a sort of "Long 1950s" that lasted from the end of the war in 1945 to 1966 when the hippie counterculture movement was in full force.

You always greet us as your friends, but then reintroduce yourself, which makes me suspicious that we might not actually be friends...

I’m not sure whether that 80s to Y2K period aught be its own thing, but I feel like 2008 was a significant turning point in North America and the world. In many ways a lot of contemporary politics is a reaction to the great recession, and global financial crisis. It also saw pretty big cultural milestones. The first not white guy president of the most powerful nation on earth, nationwide gay marriage, a rejection of the forever wars of the 2000s (that obviously didn’t really stop until the 2021). In addition to the rise of a much more international zeitgeist among young people whether in the cultural sphere (i.e, spread of the influence of music from Latin America, Asia, and Africa into the west), or politically, (see e.g, Gaza).

Funny side note, but I like that you pointed to throwback jerseys as an example of nostalgia, and then showed two teams who are not wearing throwbacks and one of whom is known for their ultra modern uniform lol. Excellent video as always. I would agree that the advent of smartphones is a good starting point for the current cultural “age”, and that is personally how I conceptualize generations. My grandparents were adults with children when they got their first TV, my parents were in their late 20s/early 30s when they got their first cellphones, I was 11 when I got my first cellphone, and my 12 year old cousin has had an iPad in her hands since she was a toddler.

I would say that India has a same age. I call it "Nehruvian Socialism era." While Nehru was only the prime minister for 17 years, this period lasted for 40 years. Reason being that those who came after him were mainly his family members, his daughter and grandson to be specific. This era saw a huge tilt towards socialist policies in India, the emergence of communist governments in the East and South of India, 3 wars, and a whole plethora of culture. It is definitely something worth exploring.

For india showa ends in 199 when liberalization, privatisation and globalization took place and foreign companies came with collaboration/joint venture with indian companies. That's took 15-20 years to show it's result .

Our cultural decades (music, clothing, design, etc.) always seem to be off from the calendar by about three or four years: "The 50s" didn't really get going until after the Korean War, the 1960s weren't "The 60s" until the Beatles. "The '70s" ran from about the Oil Crisis until PCs showed up.

I think the end of the Showa era also roughly marks the rapid slowing of baseline invention. Mind you, technology has marched on decently enough since then, but the inventions of the following years have been increasingly complex amalgamations of prior discoveries that are made possible due to increased automation and computing power. We're still seeing a decline of baseline invention, though, and many tech fields are stagnating as a result. It might be that we're nearing our species' limit when it comes to baseline discoveries.

I’d make a distinct cut off from pre-current era to current era at 1995 when Windows debuted by Microsoft which revolutionized computer interface and made using a computer more accessible to the general audience. It’s also when the global culture started to transition from phone booths to cell phones.

I can't help but feel a little like instead of going for 1984, you could have gone with 1995- this is only a year after the initial release of Netscape and the year that Internet Explorer was released, as well as Windows 95, an operating system that became extra popular because of its internet capabilities, as well as the rise of AOL and Dial-Up. In my book, 1995 marks the beginning of not just computers as a day-to-day presence, but a utility that can directly connect us to someone all across on the opposite end of the world, an interconnected world that never really existed at any point beforehand.

Interestingly, you also noted the Soviet/Russian vision of such a temporary separation. As a Russian, it seems to me that such "magnificent post-war years" can be described as the so-called "Brezhnev era", in which there were no harsh repressions, as under Stalin, there was no instability and political uncertainty, as under Khrushchev. In the same era (which, by the way, lasted from 1964 to 1982, from Brezhnev's rise to power until his death, almost as a monarch), light industry finally developed, iconic consumer goods (cars, household appliances, and so on) appeared, as well as many films that still exist today as an association with the "good old Soviet cinema". Of course, this same era (like the entire USSR) was marked by the restriction of rights, a one-party, albeit soft, dictatorship, the Afghan war and the gradual stagflation that preceded the economic collapse of the Union under Gorbachev.

I'd say the post Showa era has been very influential with the rise of the internet. As for a start date for our current era: Maby 1993, the year that the Mosaic web browser was released, the moment that really started the internet age.

I get both of the concept of both of these eras (a period of the industrial revolution ending before WWI and a mid-century to early modern period defined mostly by middle class expansion), however, I do not believe they can have specific non-arbitrary start and end dates, and using the names of queens and emperors to mark them feels a bit too localized to one country when you're trying to say most industrialized countries had a Showa era so to speak.

A few years spring to mind: •1971: there’s a whole website on the topic. End of Bretton-Woods around then • 1991: Cold War ending, the “rise of the Rest” economies, and the internet opens up. Meanwhile US voters begin their populist streak • 2001: WTO entry for China. 9/11 sets the tone of 20 years of foreign policy and domestic strife • 2008: social media matures, the smartphone era begins, and the Great Recession hit (losses that never fully healed). China ceased further reforms from there while Russia makes it first hostile moves

Dude CDs were a luxury item until the early 90's

I have an idea for a video... What are the most popular time periods in the West (Wild West, Prohibition, etc ...) that are popular abroad and how vice versa are popular eras from abroad that are popular in the West. And how do both depict those time eras in their media.

In east germany there is a term called "Ostalgie" which is a mix out of Osten (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia) which describes a nostalgia for the former gdr and especially the cultural aspect of it like the gdr brands, cars, clothes and stuff which mostly dont exist anymore or the vavation culture to mostly eastern europe or the baltic sea, tv shows and stuff, and and and. Its a similar time frame like the showa era (pretty much 1949 up until 1990)

Culturally spoken it's complicated to say that we as world have a destinct age, because still tied together, the world is as diverse as it maybe long haven't been. As a German it looks more and more so that we life in a transitional period, where we come out of the cold war order (also called Bonn Republic) and have a new order with more instability, that more and more feels like Weimar, where more and more extreme parties are in parliaments and weak governments can't fix the things needed and culturally we can see here that the dominance of the 68s ppl ends (which can be seen politicaly but also in a way that climate justice, which was here a very broad public topic gets more and more a elitist topic)

omg!! is the daruma new? love it

Another banger

15:43 *LITERALLY*

Hey JJ, I would divide the post war era in two distinct parts, which are quite different in many ways: The Atomic Age seems to be one I really like in which it covers most of the first half of the post war era (1945-1965/1973). I strongly feel that we cannot consider the post war period as one long continuous stretch of time from 1945 to 1989/1992. The Atomic Age is easily represented by the look, feel and attitudes of the first half of the post war period. Giant, chrome covered cars, Second Red Scare, Rock n' Roll, any stereotype of that first half of the post war era. This is also the part of my grandad's generation : WWII vets and the Greatest Generation! The second period is the one I struggle with, I like the term "Crisis Era" as it starts with the Oil Embargo of 1973, Watergate, Ford-Carter stagflation, Iranian Revolution and second oil crisis in 1979 and the early 1980s recession in particular. Its almost like the opposite of the first half in which a long period of peace and stability is briefly interrupted by serious crises (Cuban Missile Crisis) while this second half is a period of crisis and instability marked by brief periods of peace and stability (Reagan's second term is a strong one). This is the part of the Boomers, especially those born from 1945 to 1955!

In France, the perceived "eras" are in reverse order and with their common name : "The Mitterand Years" (1981-1996), from the President's name (symbol of socialism, new rights, 80s culture...), "The 30 glorious years" (1945-1974) after war, "The pretty times" (La Belle Epoque) (from the first real Republic in 1870 to 1914). Our Victorian Age would be the Second Empire (1848/52 -> 1870). The symbols associated with those eras are different from the english world even though the cultural and industrial revolutions happened of course at the same time. Our revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848) also serve as boundaries for those eras.

People in the UK often talk about pre thacther and post thatcher 1979-1990. I guess because that marked a highly significant period of deindustrialisation and growth of the service sector here. I am from the North of England and it is very common to hear the view of "everything was fine until thatcher ruined everything" but as an econ graduate I am more aware of the unsustainable nature of UK industry and public finances before 1979.

I like your analysis but I also think there are some really significantly different cultural shifts pretty much each decade in the late 20th century that make it hard for me to see it as all part of the same phenomenon. In America the shifts from the utopian uptightness of the 40's and 50's to the loosening of norms in the 60's to the cynicism of the 70's to the conservative revolution in the 80's to post-Cold War euphoria in the 90's are all really marked changes from each previous decade in my mind. Perhaps one could group together some of these into larger units, maybe 45 to 63 (JFK assassinated) as post-war glory, 63 to 80 (Reagan elected) as the malaise era, 80 to 2001 (9/11) the neocon era, 2001 to now the stagnation era. I think 2020 was a really pivotal year that we're still feeling in the aftermath of (Pandemic, BLM, Trump voted out) but I don't yet see the era since then as culturally distinct from the 9/11 era. Cynicism is still (unfortunately) the overriding vibe of the era. I'm looking forward to when America regains its self-confidence, and trying to drive that change.

I’m not surprised at the notion of Japanese people being nostalgic for a more imperial and facists time period (not hyperbole in this case). Even after WW2 Japan has been been run by the same conservative nationalist party (LDP) for more than half a century. Makes sense that conservatives and nationalists would be nostalgic for their old empire. Any time a non-conservative tries to enter politics at a large scale they are shut-down by the system or literally murdered by nationalists (e.g. Inejiro Asanuma).

Any division of time into discrete sections is by necessity imprecise. Time being a flowing state where changes happen gradually means that only in hindsight can we say “oh this was that or this particular era” . Kind of like diving groups into gen x,y,x etc it’s shorthand that always falls apart when you try to precise

I love hearing about Showa and Tella 😜

I would place the end at december 26th 1991. This is mostly based on how much of my parents generation seems to have been influenced by the threat of nuclear war. Something that disappeared along with the soviet Union. Some of the more famous songs from the cold war period about the threat of nuclear attack.

Remind me to come back for the Second Elizabethan era video in the future!

Saying that the period between 1918 and 1939 is a terrible period is weird in Poland. Because that was the period when we were independent.

The Showa age really marked the height of Japanese economic and soft power. Japan was on the path of overtaking the US as the world's largest economy, everyone was learning Japanese because it the language of the future. Japanese brands basically completely dominated every facade of the culture worldwide. People had Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic products at home, everyone was driving Toyotas and Nissans, and every child had a Nintendo product at home. Then the 90s came, their economy collapsed, South Korean brands (Samsung, LG, Hyundai) overtook Japanese brands (followed by Chinese/Taiwanese later) and Japan is a big but slow growing regional power.

I first learned of the term Showa from Godzilla. The films produced from the 50s-70s are considered the Showa era films. Meanwhile the two eras of Godzilla after are a bit confusing name wise. The first film of the Heisei era film series came out in the later half of the Showa era and the next era the Millennium era series are also technically Heisei.

I would say that 80’s-90’s-00’s era you’re talking about ended with 9/11. Then the era after that, which is the era we are still in, would probably be called the “information era” or “media era”. Personally, I believe that one of the biggest factors of the post-9/11 explosion of the internet and other media is the sudden massive presence of politics in pop culture brought on by the war on terror

2007-2009 I think started the most recent era. Essentially this is when majority of people started acessing the internet regularly with smart devices. Plus the impact social media has had to coincide with it. Those years solidified the Internet as a staple in everyday life and now Elmo even has a cell phone friend. I’d call this age the Mr. Linguine Age, because that’s the name of my cat and the internet loves cats

I finally have a name for the era I obsess over the most, thanks man

I would love to see a video where you recommend your favorite books on culture/society. The handful of books you have mentioned in your videos seem quite interesting.

Based on the dates, it's basically the cold war era

You could say it started with 9/11 and ended with COVID. A period of mixed economic growth and a government uninterested in non military spending.

One thing about the dates: we absolutely use formerly Heisei and now Reiwa for dates all the time. Sure, movies might have 2023 instead of R.5 on them, but I still see R.# used a lot in daily life.

In México we used the name of the late XIX and early XX century dictator to refer to a time of prosperity for many and innovation and the beginning of the industrial revolution and reforms, as well as the change in cultural structures not changed since the colonial era.

I think 1991 would be a great way to mark the end of the era as not only did it see the collapse of the Soviet Union & Communism but also I think that 1991 could be used to mark the end as 1991 really saw the idea of computer programs being stored on Compact discs became the next big thing with the release of the Commodore CDTV, Philips CD-I & Sega/Mega CD at the end of 1991 and also 1991 would be the year that the Internet would become available to public even if it wouldn't see any real penetration into the market until the mid to late 1990s. It also is rather convenient as most World History textbooks seem to cut off around the early 1990s with usually only a small mention of 9/11 and the War On Terror being included in an a small section that is usually labeled as something along the lines of "Modern times"

TIL that, on paper, Hirohito died when I was 37 minutes old (although due to the time difference, in reality my mom was still in labor with me at the time, since he died early in the morning in Japan which was the afternoon of the previous date here in the US).

I think 1989-2008 represents a certain cultural ethos. It was definitely always changing, as things always are, but this was the era of asymmetrical threats in politics, a pretty total monoculture in terms of mass media, encapsulating relatively static standards in things like film and music (note: this was also the period when heavy metal was relatively 'underground', being more culturally mainstream before it and more and more niche yet widely known afterward as the monoculture ended), and it was also a time where the internet was transforming our world but was not yet the kind of singular locale of culture that it has been ever since. This was also an era of true lassaiz-faire capitalism (though that had begun a decade prior) and overall conservatism. After 2008, the monoculture was increasingly replaced with a plurality of increasingly niche cultural expressions that began to have less and less consensus, leading into the divisive politics and echo chamber culture of the current decade. This was also the birth of the 808 and pretty much the end of movies being shot on film, perhaps not coincidentally to the former point. The internet became both totalizing in its grip on how we interact with basically every aspect of our lives and also a fundamentally more corporately-controlled venue than it had been before. Finally, the economic crash and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the Tea Party as well, laid the way for a widespread feeling of populist angst against the two-party systems in North America.

I think the Showa period actually works really well as a frame for US culture. There's been a few "chapters"; the 50s and 60s boom years, the 70s and 80s culture revolution, but to me, but it all fits together as this collective postwar/ cold war period. As for the age we're in, I was born in 91, and it's tricky🤔, but I think there's two distinct chapters; 85-2000, this transition towards globalisation and the internet, and 2000- now, smartphone, social media, war on terror, ext.. I feel like they both belong in the same period, the "digital period". maybe post 2020 started the next chapter 🤷 to early to say for me to say for sure.

I was born in 1989. It strikes me as one of the most important years in history. From geopolitics - end of the cold war - to culture (huge increase in gay rights, at least in the west) to modern technology or at least antecedents of modern technology becoming mainstream - CGI in films, burgeoning mobile phones and household computers just about to become the norm - it's sometimes weirded me out a bit, like just thinking how I was born in this huge world turning point. Something - many things on all levels - huge shifted on all levels in the late '80s to mid '90s. Weirdly enough, the Bond films provide a case study of this - compare a Bond film from '89 to Golldeneye in '95. Goldeneye is like a historical document of how the world was just...different now. The seeds had been planted earlier but the modern world really sprouted about 1989

Lol. You got to what I was seeing alarmingly. Showa’s first half is something the Japanese would DEFINITELY rather forget than celebrate. It was the second half of Showa that is so cuddly and cute to nostalgia addicts. That being said, naming reign years for emperors is actually a tradition that started in China sometime in the 100s AD. This Chinese regnal tradition was then brought over to Japan and grafted on to their own emperors.

i think our age is the post 9/11 age 2001-today