Hidehiko Ishizuka Reflects on Modern Indifference and Offers Showa-Era Advice

The town in the Showa period was like one family.

Hello, everyone. Are you a little irritated because hotel rooms and restaurants in town have switched over to heating? My name is Hidehiko Ishizuka. This time, I would like to write about the Showa-era human embarrassment.

In the Showa period, the whole neighborhood was one family

I am 62 years old, born in 1962. The first page of my memory begins with the municipal housing in Yokohama where I used to live. Two families are placed in a row each in a house separated by a thin wall. That is 10 rows in all. In other words, 40 households in a row. Since there was only one wall between us and the house next door, we could hear the sounds of laughter and fighting with a tremendous sense of presence.

When my brother and I were in elementary school, we were poking at the wall bordering the next house with the tip of a mechanical pencil, and a small hole appeared. We could see the inside of the neighbor’s house through the hole, so we hurriedly covered the hole with gum and pretended nothing had happened.

I remember neighbors borrowing and borrowing soy sauce from each other, or sharing dishes with each other because they had overcooked them. There were many children of the same generation, and everyone knew which child was whose.

If I misbehaved, someone in the neighborhood would get angry with me, and if I gained a little weight, everyone would say, “Hide-kun, you’ve grown up,” a comment that was considerate of compliance even for those days.

Not only in the municipal housing, but all the adults in town at that time were the parents of all the children.

One day, I was floating a plastic model ship I had just built in the public bathhouse when a man I did not know at all snapped the ship in half, saying, “This is no place to play. I almost cried, but I quickly understood that he was right and apologized to him. In other words, all the adults were parents and teachers, guiding the children.

What do people of the Showa period think about today’s indifferent society?

How about now? Even if you say hello to someone on the street, he or she will just pass you by.

If you are driving a car and a pedestrian is about to cross the street, of course you yield. In the past, pedestrians would bail out the driver and hurry to cross the street, but these days it seems that many pedestrians are crossing the street slowly while looking at their phones.

The same is true on station platforms. When the train arrives and the doors open, some people leisurely get off the train while looking at their phones. When it comes time to board the train, a young man near the front of the line gets on and immediately stops near the door and starts fiddling with his phone. The other passengers enter the car, dodging the young man.

A couple walks in double file on the narrow sidewalk, showing no sign of avoiding oncoming traffic. A couple slowly examines their order after it is their turn in a long line at a soft-serve ice cream shop. Even though there is only vanilla, chocolate, and mix.

When boarding a bullet train or airplane, only those who cough are not wearing masks. A mother makes her child practice paying the bill when the cash register at the store is crowded – for those of us who lived through the Showa era, the world today seems a little indifferent to others. Indifference that doesn’t bother others is fine. However, I would like people to have an eye to “what if I were to do the same thing?

In this day and age, if you give advice to your fellow workers when they are working hard toward the same single goal, it is seen as getting angry and is described as harassment. We have entered an era in which it is very difficult to teach people anything. Once again, I would like to wait for the emergence of someone like the uncle who snapped my plastic model in half.

From the February 7, 2025 issue of “FRIDAY”