Fault Lines in Public Morals: Talking about Ginza Nights, July 1967

Fault Lines in Public Morals: Talking about Ginza Nights, July 1967

In 1967, Ginza, Tokyo, still retained a small amount of light as a postwar dream city, but behind the shine, quiet changes were underway. High economic growth had peaked, new buildings were being erected one after another in the district, and salarymen's bonuses were the driving force behind the consumer society. It was a time when the "three sacred treasures" had become commonplace in households and color televisions were beginning to spread. However, in the eyes of a long-established bar owner who gazed at Ginza at night, the prosperity was somehow too thin and premature.

The owner said, "In the old days, customers would come in for one drink and then go out for another. In the old days, customers would spend the night over a glass of whiskey. Today's young people make more noise than drink. These words reveal the demise of the "chic" culture that the Ginza district had nurtured over the years. In the immediate postwar period, Ginza was a place where the smell of burnt ruins still lingered, and people searched for items amidst their poverty. There was a sense of civility and distance, even in the laughter of the geisha and the brief greetings between customers and proprietresses. In the 1960s, however, the town was eroded by the youth culture. The smell of the night changed from perfume and cigarettes to the smell of plastic and electric lights.

During this era, bars and clubs in Ginza were places where businessmen and cultural figures crossed paths and talked, and it was there that the backstage stories of politics and the drunken one-liners of poets were born. However, the managers sensed that the depth of these conversations was fading. Everyone is too busy. In the old Ginza, time stood still." These were words of regret for the culture of marginal space that was being lost behind the backdrop of economic growth.

Ginza in 1967 was itself a mirror of the times. Behind the glow of the neon signs, the suffocating atmosphere of a homogenizing city was in the air, and the old regulars had quietly disappeared. What was there was a night of consumption dominated by money and fashion. The human breath, once called "chic," was being swept away by the speed of the economy.

The story of the manager of this long-established bar is not mere nostalgia for the transformation of the city, but a valuable testimony that records the city's transformation in human words. The pause and quiet that Ginza had in the Showa period, as well as the dignity of its language, were lost after this period. His words are a record of the fault line of manners and customs that collapsed without a sound in the shadow of prosperity, quietly announcing the end of an era that flowed behind the glamorous nightlife.