shashasha

As Japan’s current emperor Akihito prepares for his abdication at the end of this month, Japanese photographer Noboru Hama’s book “Thus, Passed Showa Era” takes a look back at 1989, when the previous emperor died—and with him the “Showa” imperial era.
Hirohito died on January 7, 1989. Hama’s gloomy, dark, grainy photographs document the days around February 24th; Hama shows us the funeral procession, with people hiding under umbrellas in the never-stopping Tokyo rain; the Japanese flags in streets everywhere. They show a Japan before the end of the bubble era, a Japan entering the “lost decade.” An astonishing contemporary historical document.