Showa Hall is a retro museum in Takayama that focuses on curating artifacts from recent history. Retro museums focus on the era of economic revival of post-war Japan and all of the culture that came from it. Most items are from the 1950s and 1960s. But lately, some of these museums have added things from the 70s and 80s, sometimes even 90s.
I love retro museums because it's all history that our modern culture and society have been built upon. You could say that all history has built our modern lives, but recent history of 50 to 60 years is so close that you can easily make those connections to modern day and see how things have changed from not that long ago.
Showa Hall was one of the first touristy places I visited in Takayama when I first arrived 10 years ago, and I fell in love with the idea of retro museums. Last week, we had a field trip at school where we walked around town and viewed the town like a tourist, so I returned.
While Takayama has changed quite a bit in the 10 years I've lived here, the Showa Hall remains almost identical. There are a few new things, but it's mostly stayed the same.
The doctor's office, restaurant, toy store, and many other mock businesses were nearly the same with the exception of a few more trinkets and artifacts added.
The biggest change was the expanded candy store before you even enter the museum. Previously they used this as a garage for some old cars.
Once you enter the museum, there's a new pachinko parlor and a few other old styles games.
One of the other big changes was upstairs. What used to be some open space next to the Showa style home has now become a 90s game room.
90s is absolutely not Showa, though. The Showa era ended in 1989 and ushered in the Heisei era. But the 90s are Retro, so it still somewhat makes sense. Maybe some of the J-pop records from the music store downstairs were already walking that fine line.
As mentioned above, I love Retro Showa-era Museums because the history is so close. But it's still history that I never actually lived, so even though it was near history, it was still distant. The 90s are WAY different because not only had I lived through them before, they're only 30 years ago.
Also mentioned above, I revisited the Showa Hall during a school field trip, so they were many students in the museum at the same time, and I was with some teachers, too. One teacher is getting pretty close to 60-years-old, so he lived through the era with many of the items in the museum. He commented how he his school classroom looked identical to the one in the museum, and how he had memorized most of the music in the store from hearing it so many times. His reaction was much more of a nostalgia trip than a "ugh I'm getting old" feeling.
Also, the 90s gaming stuff is really just tacked on. They aren't trying to recreate a 90s gaming room. They're just displaying a bunch of games and have the mini consoles up. Really low effort. You can get the exact same experience by going to any used game store. Maybe this better explains my apprehension of their 90s gaming display.
The Showa Hall is still one of my favorite places in Takayama. Another Retro Museum had also opened in the last 10 years, but it's much more of a circus rather than a caringly curated collection and recreation of the times. I would recommend visiting if you ever come to Takayama. :)