The rise of the petrochemical industry was among the major economic transformations of postwar Japan. Small-scale production made Japanese synthetic resins uncompetitive on the world market, which meant that the rapidly growing volume of plastics had to find a consumer market at home. This chapter identifies the main avenues through which consumer products made of plastics permeated Japanese daily life, from electrical appliances and automobile parts to textiles and food packaging. The shift of routines and conventions facilitated by plastic consumption during the high-growth era lies at the root of Japan's current plastic waste problems.

Introduction

The city of Minamata made history as the site of one of the most disastrous environmental pollution cases in Japan, giving its name to Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by methylmercury poisoning from the industrial wastewater released by the Chisso Corporation's chemical factory. Minamata has become a definitive symbol of both the dark side of postwar Japan's high growth and the rise of its citizens’ movement. But one detail that has fallen into obscurity is the pivotal role played in Japan's postwar history of the product to which the citizens of the Minamata Bay succumbed. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was the first of many types of plastic material that began to infiltrate daily life from the 1950s onward. Their applications ranged from sewage and cable insulation to no-iron shirts and cling wrap. Though largely invisible, plastics have been instrumental for the construction of akarui seikatsu, usually translated as “bright Japan” or “bright new life”—the dream of an affluent future inspired by the ideal of the American middle-class lifestyle.

Bakelite was the first man-made polymer derived from fossil-fuel chemicals commonly known as “plastic.” The use of a singular form, though notorious, is misleading, since dozens of different polymers have been synthetized ever since. Bakelite was “discovered” in the United States in 1907 and within less than two decades became a household name worldwide. It was propagated as “material of a thousand uses” found in such diverse applications as machine parts and sockets for light bulbs, musical instruments (oboe, clarinet, accordion), saucepan handles, telephone handsets, sunglasses, combs, buttons and jewelry.