The year was 1979. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito was in the 54th year of his reign. Japan's prime minister was Masayoshi Ohira. In 1979, people still paid for goods with ¥500 bills. There was no consumption tax or Internet, there were no cell phones and no Japanese were playing in the U.S. major leagues. The Japanese translation of Ezra Vogel's "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America" sold 435,000 copies. In July, Sony launched its TPS-L2, better known as the Walkman. The playback-only cassette player and lightweight stereo headphones sold for ¥33,000.
The year will also be remembered as the one in which the late architect Kisho Kurokawa proposed "a hotel for the year 2001." There would be no rooms, only crawl spaces (but clean crawl spaces with amenities, of course).
Fascination with this futuristic concept aside, the "capsule hotel" represented a sensible alternative to taking a taxi home after the last train stopped running. In 1979, the starting fare for taxis in major cities was boosted by ¥50 to ¥380. Wage-earners living in the distant suburbs faced ruinous outlays if they missed the evening's final train departure.
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