In
all of my collection there is not a single house marked "Made in Occupied
Japan." I have seen one or two very tiny and uninteresting simple houses
marked Occupied Japan, but they were actually tree ornaments and not strictly
village houses. I find this perplexing. The United States occupied Japan from
1945 to 1952, but dropped the mandate to label exports as occupied in 1948.
I have a lot of postwar Japanese houses. They seem to be quite plentiful and
not that hard to find. It appears that there was a furious - but actually quite
brief resurgence of the Japanese Christmas house that started on or just after
1948 - produced some fairly nice and large examples in the early '50's, then
petered out rapidly in less and less complex and artful renderings to relinquish
Christmas decoration manufacturing almost totally to Taiwan by the early to
mid '60's. In the '60's, Japan is anxious to "upgrade" Her industrial
status before the world, leave Her former image as the "Queen of Kitch"
behind and go "high-tech" all the way. We are all familiar with the
way that that turned out. But what a shame to leave these joyful talents behind.
It's ironic, I think, that the hi-tech stuff is hopelessly obsolete and on it's
way to landfills in well under ten years, while people have preserved these
"kitchy" little dimestore things for sometimes a century! - a shame
there wasn't room for both! Perhaps there might have been - but other, deeper
things were happening to Christmas.
World war II had struck the American Christmas "Putz" a mortal blow.
For about a decade it struggled valiantly - through the late '40's...up to about
1954 - the year when just about everybody had TV. And in other ways, Christmas
was going strong! Bubble lights! The greatest -now "classic" movies
were made -like It's a Wonderful Life - Miracle on 34th Street -The Bishop's
Wife - Christmas in Connecticut and several others - all in the same year (1947).Great
songs, too - and lots of them! White Christmas and The Christmas Song came into
being during the war.Merry Little, Frosty, Rudolph, Carol of the Bells and dozens
of now-indispensible songs continued to be written well into the '60's. Up until
about the Viet Nam War. Since then - none have really stuck, have they? Lionel
Trains had changed from toylike prewar charm to stark realism and built up to
their pinnacle year in 1954 and 3 years later - practically bankrupt - sold
out to an impersonal corporate amalgam that all but ran Lionel into the ground
in the '60s. Kids just lost interest in trains. In the early 50's the aluminum
Christmas tree appeared and Rock 'n Roll in 1954. By '54 nobody put up putzes
very much. It took a lot of time - both before and after - and we were glued
to the TV. There were the Cold War. The Korean War. Bomb shelters. McCarthyism
and commies under every rock. Madison Avenue imposing terrible role models on
women and conformity on men. Marlboros and materialism and the Grey Flannel
Suit. What room for Christmas reveries amid all this? The little houses got
smaller and ever less interesting. Perhaps Japan would have revived them back
to their old glory - if anyone was buying. But our prewar childlike naiveties
were gone. We were a nation on speed -still pumped full of adrenalin from the
Great War, but drianed of dreams except of full garages and empty hearts. In
many ways - we lost that war .....especially where the Christmas decorations
and the little houses were concerned. They never again acheived the charm and
imaginative artistry that we had taken for granted from prewar Germany and Japan.