Pink Lady Vintage Compact

See the words Pink Lady and anyone in Japan will immediately think of the massively popular female pop duo. The Pink Lady compacts are completely unrelated to the pop act, but were coincidentally popular around the same time, in the 1970s. They were the Japanese version of Stratton compacts, but it seems their products never went beyond domestic borders.

I experienced surprise upon surprise when I opened up this box. This bold Egyptian-inspired design was very unexpected, not to mention the anachronistic pairing of a compact and lighter. A Japanese website (sources not verified) notes that the set was most likely inspired by the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the Tokyo National Museum in 1965, which was seen by nearly 1.3 million people.  

An even bigger surprise: the cigarette lighter turned out to be a playful take on the perfume bottle! The perfume itself was extremely light.

Another Pink Lady compact, unearthed from my mother's makeup drawer.

Uncovering History through Old Stamps

The other day, when I went to my grandmother's, she asked me to sort her stamps. She has quite a substantial collection of Japanese stamps from the 1960s to 1970s. Several years ago, she gave me the most valuable chunk -- sheet after sheet of vintage stamps, in pristine condition. I fell instantly in love with the infinite designs, and how, despite their unassuming nature, they reveal a great deal about our history. 

I thought I'd seen all that she had, but it turns out she has a boxful of loose stamps that she's been trying to use up. Among them were some surprises, both good and bad.

According to an old stamp catalogue (circa 1979), also from my grandma, the above three stamps are:

-6 yen stamp, "Woman working in a printing factory". Issued November 25, 1949.  

-7 sen stamp, "Pearl Harbor Attack". Issued December 8, 1942.

-20 yen stamp, "Planting". Issued May 10, 1949.

The quality of the photo isn't that great, so the crucial middle stamp is blurred. All the same, I felt a sickening jolt when I read the words.

 

These aren't actually stamps at all, but "Double Barred Cross Seals" issued by the Japan Antituberculosis Association. The ones here are from the late 1950s to the 1960s. The seals were first produced in 1952 in Japan, and apparently continue to this day. I'm sure many people had them confused with real stamps!

Diligently creating piles of stamps by value. It took forever and my arms started aching towards the end.

Cracking Gingko Nuts -- Ghetto Version

The very same day my mom was cooking gingko nuts at home, my grandmother decided to feed me some as well. I expected her to commiserate about the arduous process of cracking and peeling and boiling, only to have her demonstrate an infinitely easier way.

Apparently she learned this on TV -- you put some gingko nuts (in their shells) into a bag, microwave them until they start popping, then take them out. In this case, she didn't have a bag readily available, so she emptied the paper bag containing her pills and used that.

Once the shells have been sufficiently warmed (and made more flexible) by the microwave, you take a nutcracker and crack open the shell. She used a wrench from the tool box my father used in school in the late 1950s.

After peeling off the skins, she put them back in the bag and back in the microwave, and heated them up until the bag started smoking. Hey presto, cooked gingko! But the nuts had an odd, bitter aftertaste, and didn't have the satisfying chewiness they do when properly cooked. The irony of being taught a lesser cooking technique by my grandmother while my mother adhered to the old-school process did not escape me.

Taisho-era Kokugo Textbooks

Once again digging into my grandmother's bounty: a Taisho-era Japanese-language (kokugo) textbook, first published in 1918. (She bought a reissued version later, although I don't know if that means 1940 or 1960.)

By the way, schoolchildren learned to read in katakana first, not hiragana as is the practice today.

A very didactic version of the famous Saru-Kani Gassen (The Crab and the Monkey) that stresses the "eye for an eye" philosophy. 

In the last page of the story, the monkey, who has had red-hot chestnuts thrown at him, runs to sit in a bucket of water. However, a bee stings him, and the monkey is forced to run away. Then, a pail jumps on top of him and pins him down. Then, the baby crab (whose mother has been killed by the monkey) cuts his head off. 

Another version of the textbook is devoted to moral lessons or rules/teachings.

All the lessons are written on the first page, and the rest of the book consists of a drawing that describes the message. For example, "3. Don't be lazy.", "7. Be careful with food.", "8. Honor your parents' teachings.", "16. Your Imperial Majesty.", "23. Do not harm living creatures." 

I'm a bit confused by the drawing on the upper left, which looks like a monkey cooking another monkey over a fire while a baby clings to him. My grandmother says the monkey has been strung up, and the baby is trying to free him.

An English Notebook and Report Card from 1943

My grandmother's old English notebook, from circa 1943.

The "Excellent"s turn to "Very Good"s when she gets a new English teacher.

What's slightly unnerving is that the high level of English. Was education better then? 

A bonus: a report card from 1941, when she was 15 years old. 

Despite her claim that no-one was urging her to study, she got great marks in the main subjects. Hilariously, her one bad grade was a 30 in home economics.

The 1950's Songbook

From the early 1950s: a lyric booklet that features excerpts of pop song lyrics. Once again, my grandmother's. 

She still remembers these songs, word for word. When I expressed surprise that a Japanese person who only learned English in school (in the early 1940s, no less!) could sing so smoothly, she scoffed. "It's not that unusual."

She couldn't sing "La Mer" in French, though.

Aside from the table of contents, in which the song titles were written in both English and Japanese, the only thing that lets you know that this was published in Japan is the "yen" currency denoted in the left corner.

Science Class in 1942

Apparently, my grandmother spent a significant amount of time trying to find something in her apartment last week. She succeeded, but unearthed some other long-lost items as well. This is her old Science notebook from around 1943, when she was 17 years old.

What's immediately striking is that the content of Science classes doesn't seem to have changed much; I remember learning the exact same thing (basic plant biology) in junior high. But this was before glossy textbooks with color photographs and handouts -- if you wanted to retain anything, you had to write it all down.

What's different is the use of katakana mixed with kanji. Today, we use katakana to write a word that is derived from a foreign language, but in her day, they were used in the way hiragana is today.

The illustrations contain hints of color, which suggests a certain playfulness. After all, this is the girl that drew this picture in class.

Seeing the notebooks, my grandmother remarked, "I did fairly well in school, but I was never at the top of my class. But no-one was telling us to study hard. It would have been trouble if we decided we wanted to go to university."

A Schoolgirl Doodles During Class in 1942

My grandmother was 16 years old in 1942, and attending jogakko, the equivalent of secondary school for girls at the time. She can tell you tales of propping chalkboard erasers on top of the classroom door so they would fall on the teacher, and the elaborate methods she would devise so the teacher would not catch her doodling in class -- stories that would not sound out of place today. Schoolgirls are eternal.

A couple of said doodles: 

These weren't original drawings, but painstakingly drawn imitations of popular illustrations, done in pencil and sumi ink.

 (Click to enlarge.)

An illustration of Madame Butterfly (notice the butterfly-print kimono). My grandmother would go on to become a calligraphy teacher -- an art that requires you to observe and copy from the best, then go on and make it your own. To see such a playful form of self-expression (and evidence of other talent) coming from her was a pleasant surprise.

Sushi Appetizer

Sushi with smoked salmon and capers, pink denbu (shredded fish)-topped norimaki rolls that form cherry blossoms, and my mother's specialty, California rolls.

Homework, Circa 1956

My dad's homework from when he was six years old. It's artwork of The Tortoise and the Hare, but in his version, the hare wins.

Every month, they had to write the calendar, and draw a picture representing that month. January is a kid on stilts. Notice the screwy "6".

For March, he drew the hina dolls. Numbers are still a hurdle: 14 and 15 are written as 41 and 51.

For July, fireworks.

For November: abstract imagery (of foliage?), which I take to be an indication of artistic development.

D.P.E.

D.P.E.: a term that was popularized in Japan as photo-taking became widespread. An abbreviation of "developing, printing, and enlargement", a D.P.E. was the Japanese name for a photo shop.

On the left is a paper bag from a "D.P.E. Owada" in Shibuya, found inexplicably in an old sewing box. While I couldn't pinpoint exactly when these photos were developed, some clues:

1. The use of old kanji.
The second from bottom row states the store's location, near the bus terminal in the south exit of Shibuya Station. What's written as
澁谷驛南口バス廣場
is in today's simpler kanji,
渋谷駅南口バス広場. Incidentally, the bus terminal was built around 1961, but the store could have been around before that.

2. The drawing of the Rolliflex twin-lens reflex camera, a camera introduced by German company Rollei in 1929.

3. The blurb in the red rectangle that mentions the shop's use of D-76 developer, which "produces a very fine grain". D-76 is a black-and-white film developer.

4. The receipt on the back side of the bag, which shows that developing one roll of 120 format film with 13 4×6 cm size photos costs 121 yen. That would be 1.35 dollars in today's market, but without knowing when all this took place, this is a fairly pointless conversion.

Since the very act of getting film developed has now become archaic, it feels strange to think that even within the history of D.P.E.s, this goes pretty far back.

Wednesday, January 28th, 1942

(From my grandfather's diary in 1942.)

Wednesday, January 28.

Sunny, cloudy in the afternoon.

Day off
7 am woke up
Nurse Araki-san came to the house
(11am-1.pm)
Went to see a newsreel with Mother and Sister.
2.30 pm Left house 3 pm. Arrived at Shinjuku
Asahi News Theater (-4:30pm)
(news, violins)
Ate ice cream in Takano
Came home 6.pm
Got haircut at Tsuji on Koshin-dori
(7.30-9.30 pm)



I never had the chance to meet my grandfather, but ironically I'm now privy to the most intimate details of his life. I wish my own planner entries consisted of more than haphazard memos and scribbles; imagine posterity trying to piece my life together from that!

Obscure/Obscured Japanese History

1908-The first group of Japanese people travel to Brazil by boat, seeking work in coffee plantations. The Japanese government promoted emigration as a solution to overpopulation and poverty in rural areas, and an estimated 190,000 people relocated to Brazil between 1908 and 1941, when diplomatic ties between Japan and Brazil were suspended.

(In the next hundred years, Japanese Brazilians will find themselves heading to Japan to find work, and then once again heading back to Brazil as the economy crumbles.)

1926-The Japanese National Health Insurance Law of 1922 becomes operative.







1927-Amateur radio service (ham radio) is internationally recognized.












1969-Japan Sea Cable (JASC) begins operation, connecting Japan's Naoetsu to Russia's Nakhodka. Operations end in 1995, after a new fiber-optic telephone cable is installed, after which JASC is used by Japanese and Russian scientists to carry out joint experiments.



1979-Automated telephone systems go nationwide. Telephone operators become obsolete, and listening in on people's phone conversations becomes a whole lot harder.

Obscure and Not-So-Obscure Japanese History

From my grandmother's stamp collection:

1922-Boy Scouts of Japan is established








1927-The first subway line begins operations in Japan, a private company enterprise running from Ueno to Asakusa








1928-Radio physical exercises (rajio taiso) begin, a series of exercise routines accompanied to music aired several times a day on the radio








1946-Women's suffrage granted