Retro Showa Japan

The Showa era ran from 1926 to 1989, but its design sensibility never really went anywhere. These are the objects that defined Japanese everyday life for decades: the paste pot on every school desk, the candy tin passed around on long train rides, the colored pencils in the familiar paper-wrapped sets. Some of these products have barely changed since they were introduced. That's not nostalgia for its own sake. It's just that they were right the first time.