Nostalgic for the End of History: City Pop and the Multiple Lives of 1980s Japan

Abstract: In 2017, Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 single, “Plastic Love,” emerged seemingly out of nowhere and garnered attention among English-speaking audiences for its nostalgic appeal. The curious resurgence of “Plastic Love” as such suggests the enduring symbolic and historical significance of “1980s Japan” as a source of U.S. anxious fascination regarding East Asia’s capacity for economic growth. Contextualizing the belated popularity of “Plastic Love” with Donald J. Trump’s 2016 (and onward) nostalgia for a manufacturing economy and Fredric Jameson’s discussion of nostalgia in his 1984 formulation of postmodernism, this essay argues that nostalgia disallows any neat periodization of the “Asian Century.” Instead, the Japanese racial form of nostalgia enfolds the persistence of U.S. hegemony into the shifts in power that have accompanied U.S. decline.