ABSTRACT
The films and television programmes that play upon themes of nostalgia tend to adhere to an incomplete picture of Japan's economic development. The reason the Japan Airlines plane crash has entered the limelight as a narrative focus in the popular media, twenty-some years after the crash occurred, has to do with the symbolic affinity between the history of the Japan Airlines corporation and the economic history of post-war Japan. In Japan, however, the division occurs between the pre- and post-war periods, with the end of the war serving as the starting point for a 'long post-war' that has continued in the realm of discourse. Japan Airlines was a national symbol of rapid economic growth in the post-war era, as well as of Japan's expansion into global markets. In Twentieth Century Boys, the Japan World Exposition of 1970, which symbolizes the period of rapid economic growth, is contrasted with the Woodstock Festival of 1969, which represents the counterculture.
