ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes some representative Showa nostalgic films – the film series of Always: Sunset on Third Street and Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad – in which Tokyo Tower plays a significant role as mise-en-scene. Osawa Masachi, who defines the 1950s and 1960s in Japan as 'the age of ideals', argues that this film represents a yearning for the ideals of that time. In a kind of 'boom' in yearning for the Showa 30s, contemporary people do not necessarily yearn for the actual reality of the Showa 30s. Always: Sunset on Third Street follows the daily lives of both the families. The film Tokyo Tower at Twilight, released in 1959 – one year after the completion of the tower – is a kind of Cinderella story in which a poor salesgirl from a dressmaker's shop gets married to the son of the president of a major automobile company.
