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.