Futuristic Illustrations for Kids of the Showa Era - Our 21st Century

“Evacuation from Earth,” “Tokyo 2061,” “Artificial Sun in a World Without Night,” “A Computer Manufacturing Human Beings.” This book presents a collection of futuristic conceptual illustrations found in magazines for kids from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, most of the illustrated articles anticipating what life would be like in the 21st century were a nonsensical parade of daydream, fantasy, and wild flights of imagination. The illustrations are grouped into 6 categories : everyday life, modes of transportation, robots, computers, space and the end of the world. Now that we are the “people of the future” living in the real 21st century, let’s travel back in time to the “lost 21st century” that the Showa era adults were so absorbed in creating—- utopias full of hopes and dreams as well as doomed landscapes of deathtopias.