"Christmas Tina~泡沫冬景" has garnered widespread praise for its delicate narrative and sense of authenticity. The immersive feeling of era transition it creates will be continued in "The Last Poem"
The story of "Christmas Tina" begins in 1988 Japan, at the peak of the bubble economy. It depicts a remarkable encounter in Tokyo in 1988, where two young people from different countries search for genuine warmth amidst the illusory prosperity of the bubble era.
As a sequel set in the same universe as "Christmas Tina", "The Last Poem" will launch a new serialized column to share this work's unique stage story. This article will focus on explaining Japan's "Employment Ice Age" during the late 1990s.
What paths would the young people who experienced the bubble economy's prosperity take after its collapse? Moving to the countryside? Educational expansion? It seems like a preview version. Japanese university graduates from thirty years ago faced a hellish start?!
After the Christmas Eve of 1988, the story of "Christmas Tina" came to an interim conclusion. Since then, real Japanese society has undergone earth-shaking changes.
Faced with rapidly inflating asset bubbles, the Bank of Japan sharply raised interest rates in 1989. The abrupt monetary tightening first impacted the stock market, which began to plummet. The real estate market held on for another year before confidence collapsed in 1991. Prices, led by Tokyo, began to crash, and a situation where assets were overvalued but hard to sell emerged.
With the plunge in Japanese stocks and real estate, the asset bubble burst completely. Large-scale corporate bankruptcies occurred, and the nation entered a prolonged period of economic stagnation.
At the beginning of 1999, towards the end of the 20th century, the story of "The Last Poem", the sequel set in the same world as "Christmas Tina", begins. By this time, Japan was experiencing an economic slump after the bubble burst, further hit hard by the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Note: text mentions 1998, often associated with Japan's financial crisis). Suicide rates and unemployment rates were climbing, and the social atmosphere was heavy.
The Course of the Employment Ice Age
In the early 1990s, to counter the employment crisis, the Japanese government chose to prioritize rescuing large corporations. By bailing out banks and maintaining the cross-shareholding system, they essentially preserved the foundation for the survival of large enterprises, thereby sustaining the "lifetime employment system."
However, this system primarily benefited older employees who already had stable positions within companies. Most of them were burdened with mortgages. Stabilizing this group not only helped maintain basic stability in the job market but also, to some extent, prevented a complete collapse of the real estate market. During the turbulent period after the bubble burst, the lifetime employment system became an important buffer preventing a total economic collapse.
But this policy was not friendly to young people entering society at that time, especially university graduates. They faced the de facto dissolution of the "lifetime employment system" and a sharp reduction in stable positions.
To alleviate employment pressure, the Japanese government mainly implemented two policies:
Rural Infrastructure Revitalization Plans;
Educational Expansion.
The former aimed to guide highly educated youth not to overly concentrate on working in large cities. The latter rapidly expanded master's and doctoral enrollments to delay graduates' entry into the job market.
Starting from 1992, the scale of Japanese higher education expanded rapidly. The number of master's and doctoral students quickly exceeded 200,000, but this also led to academic inflation. Furthermore, higher education expansion was closely related to Japan's "National Strategy for Innovation through Science and Technology." However, as this strategy faced setbacks in international competition, particularly in semiconductors, many highly educated talents trained to support industrial upgrading ultimately found themselves with "no place to apply their skills."
At that time, Japanese youth had three main choices:
First, respond to the call to leave the cities and participate in rural development, although most chose to return to cities after 2000.
Second, stay in cities to compete for scarce regular positions or accept non-regular employment like dispatch or temporary work. To repair their balance sheets, large companies focused on retaining older employees, offering few regular positions to young people. After the Japanese government passed the Worker Dispatch Law, companies followed suit, heavily utilizing dispatched and temporary workers.
Third, choose postgraduate studies (master's/PhD) to postpone employment. However, with the failure of Japan's science and technology policy, they still faced a lack of suitable positions years later.
In fact, the unemployment rate did not peak immediately after the bubble burst. It reached its highest point around 2000 and then remained stubbornly high.
The Lost Generation
Consequently, the period from 1993 to 2005 became known as the "Employment Ice Age," primarily referring to the period of severe employment difficulties following the collapse of Japan's bubble economy. Young people seeking jobs during this time were called the "Ice Age Generation" or the "Lost Generation." Statistics show that the youth (15-24 years old) unemployment rate peaked at around 10% (for comparison: the 2022 youth unemployment rate was 4.6%). It reached its zenith around 2000, the "Super Ice Age," where the employment rate for new university graduates fell to 55.8%, and approximately 22.5% of new graduates were unemployed.
"The Last Poem" features a Japanese heroine, Sakurai Emi, who is a veritable member of this "Employment Ice Age Generation." As a student about to graduate from high school, she is deeply influenced by the overall social atmosphere of the time and feels some anxiety and uncertainty about her future path.
The generation she represents grew up during a period of Japan's rapid economic growth and a positive, prosperous social atmosphere. The proportion of them receiving higher education was significantly higher than that of their parents' generation.
However, just as they entered society with expectations, they encountered sudden economic stagnation and a drying up of opportunities.
Most young people were forced to accept non-regular employment, such as dispatch or temporary work, leading to significantly reduced salaries, benefits, and bleak career prospects. Widespread, frustration, and a sense of uncertainty about the future became the common psychological of the "Lost Generation."
The Emergence of Otaku Culture
In such a social environment, Japan saw a significant rise in "Hikikomori" (social recluses) who withdrew from social interaction, stayed at home for long periods, immersed themselves in the internet, and sought solace in virtual worlds. This provided fertile social ground for the growth of "Otaku Culture." Estimates placed their numbers as high as approximately 700,000.
The overheated, imbalanced development led to a stock market crash. The ensuing public anxiety following the shift to a market economy plunged Japan into a period of depression. People began seeking solace and satisfaction in various entertainment needs.
Music, film, street culture, and others grew counter-intuitively amidst the压抑. Tokyo's Harajuku, Shibuya, and other areas gradually became the birthplace and center of Asian trend culture. On the other hand, "Otaku Culture" saw its dawn. Akihabara transformed from an electronics district into a holy land for otaku, and ACG (Anime, Comic, Game) culture flourished.
As a low-cost form of entertainment, the secondary dimension (anime/game world), with its affordability and ease of immersion, met the needs of young people to fill time and alleviate real-world anxiety—the underlying reality was a widespread pessimism about the future.
The pressures of the Employment Ice Age forced Japan's new generation to turn their attention and interests towards numerous subcultures. Japan's already deep ACG foundation accumulated in the 1980s, coupled with the vast consumer market nurtured during the bubble economy period, jointly provided the opportunity for the rise of subcultures after the 1990s.
A World of Reunion
Tokyo, once a city of blooming prosperity, was mired in waves of "bankruptcies," "unemployment," and "suicides."
Where would the ordinary young people who experienced the bubble economy's prosperity go after its collapse?
The immersive sense of era transition continues in "The Last Poem", which once again focuses on ordinary people in a great era.
In Japan, the collapse of the bubble economy and the social atmosphere of rising unemployment force the girl named Sakurai Emi to face her choices after high school graduation.
The Chinese girl Lin Chunxuan, who unfortunately lost her family in the 1998 floods, coincidentally accepts Jiang Xiaomo's suggestion and decides to leave for Japan.
The female protagonist from the previous work, "Christmas Tina", Sakurai Kanna, is employed at a large game retail store in Tokyo, responsible for wholesale procurement. This coincided with the golden age of the Japanese game industry, marked by the "console wars" between Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64.
The male protagonist from the previous work, "Christmas Tina", Jing Xiaoran, after a chance reunion with Jiang Xiaomo, accepts Sakura Shiori's invitation and returns to Tokyo after a hiatus of 7-8 years.
Jiang Xiaomo, who seized opportunities during the prosperous bubble economy and managed various businesses, saw his ventures gradually go bankrupt and contract after the bubble burst, as land price speculation became history. His personal起伏 is a vivid example of Japan's economy shifting from illusory prosperity to burst bubble.
After the bubble economy, Sakura Shiori tried her hand at various independent business ventures over the years. After Jing Xiaoran came to Japan, she encouraged him to restart their old trade in the food and beverage business together. This later evolved into the first maid cafe in Akihabara.
The worldlines converge. The old and new characters gather again in Tokyo. Through incredible twists of fate, they will jointly operate the first maid cafe born in the "IF line of Akihabara."
In real history, the first cafe considered a true maid cafe is believed to be "Cure Maid," which opened in Akihabara's electronics district in March 2001. There, waitresses dressed in Victorian maid uniforms treat customers as masters in a private home.
Next Issue Preview
Akihabara, the birthplace of the maid cafe, is also the main stage for the story of "The Last Poem". Significant effort has been invested in the conceptual design of "Akihabara" for this work. We will later share details on how we recreated Akihabara circa 1999.
Please look forward to it!
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