Nostalgia and Anticipation: A Case Study of Contemporary Japanese Melodrama

This article traces the economic, social, and cultural development of Japan over the past few decades. The first part of the paper describes and analyzes some of the underlying anxieties and desires of the Japanese that have resulted from their country's historical development, particularly the burst of the economic bubble. The second part examines selected romantic melodramas that have been produced from the 1990s until recent years. It explores how the characterization and setting of these movies convey the nostalgic feeling of the Japanese towards their past, i.e. the time before the burst of the bubble economy.