Japan is nostalgic for a past that was in part worse than its present

THE YEARS slip away as one walks through the gates of Daiba Itchome Shotengai, a 1960s-themed shopping district in Tokyo’s bay area. Children munch on dagashi, cheap and old-fashioned Japanese snacks. A couple of 20-somethings take turns at dialling a rotary telephone. A newspaper headline on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics reads dreamily: “Clear blue sky—opening ceremony of the century”. A model of an under-construction Tokyo Tower, the building that would come to symbolise Japan’s post-war recovery and economic boom, stands in one of the hallways.