Why Are Japan's Women Going Back To The ‘80s?

As The Country’s Economy Looks Up, Several Local Women Are Breathing Positivity Into The People’s General Mood And Morale By Bringing Back A Resurgence Of Interest In The ‘80s – Often Considered The Country’s ‘bubble Era, When Japan’s Economy Was At Its Height.

Kaori Masukodera remembers, barely, riding as a child with her mother, her hair teased and her lips bright red, in the family’s convertible to the beach. It was the last gasp of the 1980s, a time of Champagne, garish colors and bubbly disco dance-floor anthems, and the last time many people in Japan felt rich and ascendant.

A so-called Lost Decade and many economically stagnant years later, the family’s convertible and beach vacations are long gone — but Masukodera is helping to bring the rest of Japan’s bubble era back. She performs in a pop-music duo called Bed In that borrows heavily from the keyboard lines, electric drums and power chords of the ‘80s. They dress ‘80s, too: The shoulder pads are big, the skirts are mini and the hues are Day-Glo when they aren’t just plain shiny.

“Until a few years ago, most people saw the bubble period as a negative legacy, and it was considered quite tacky,” said Masukodera, 32, wearing a tight blazer with jutting shoulder pads emblazoned with images of the Tokyo nightscape, paired with a miniskirt and gold jewelry.

“That completely changed in the last few years,” she added. “Now people recognise it as kind of a cool period.”

Japan is in the midst of its most prosperous period in decades, as the economy cranks up and companies scramble for increasingly scarce workers. Still, for many people in Japan, that only underlines how far the country has fallen from the heights of the ‘80s — wages are barely rising, the population is aging and shrinking, and many feel that Japan’s best days are over.

That feeling has helped fuel nostalgia for the last time Japan was unquestionably on top of the world, joining a global reappreciation for the ‘80s in general.