001_The Paper Airplane Craze: Perhaps the Cheapest Trend in the World, Which Even Had Its Own Tournament

What do you do when you have a piece of paper?
I fold it into a paper airplane and fly it.

Hello. I'm Toretro. As my name suggests, I love all things retro.
I work as a freelance web director and designer.

At drinking parties with fellow retro enthusiasts, we often talk about the late 1970s (the mid-Showa era) and get excited, saying, 'That brings back memories!'

So, as a little retro gift from me to you,
I decided to compile these old stories into a note.

I think I'll write about the crazes that suddenly arrived when I was a child.

This will be a narrow account limited to my own personal experiences, but I hope you enjoy it.

Well then, this time the craze is...

The Paper Airplane Craze

When I was in the third or fourth grade of elementary school, a paper airplane craze hit.
I still don't know why it became popular. (I don't remember...)
Everyone would tear pages out of their notebooks, fold them into airplanes as they pleased, and fly them during recess.

At first, games like darts or target practice, where we competed for speed, were the mainstream.
Because of that, the airplanes were mostly long, thin, and pointed at the tip; it felt more like throwing than flying.

Before long, we gradually started competing for flight time, and the shapes of the airplanes changed as well.
People started doing their own research on how to make them fly longer, and what was just a game started to feel like a sport.

The Birth of Unit 1

I thought the paper airplane craze was limited to my class, but it seems it was popular among the older students too, and after school, I would discuss with the neighborhood boys how to make them fly for a long time, even though we were just kids.

That was when an older student showed me what was called a swallow-type airplane.
It was a strange-looking airplane with parts torn off by fingers here and there. It was unbelievably fast and had a decent flight time! It was impressive how it really flew like a swallow.

Unfortunately, he wouldn't teach me how to make it.
The older boy said, 'It's an airplane I came up with, so I can't teach you easily.'

If you search online now, quite a few articles come up, so it might actually be a nationally famous type of airplane.

Anyway, when I got home, I would have airplane discussions with my father.
I remember us folding airplanes this way and that using newspaper inserts.

And then one day, a single airplane was finally completed.

At the time, we called it Unit 1.
That airplane flew better than anything we had made before, by a long shot.

After Unit 1, the paper airplane craze heated up even more, and the days of folding paper continued for a while, as if to follow in the footsteps of Unit 1.

The Increasingly Heated Airplane Development

Until then, we had only folded airplanes during breaks, but some started folding them during class, and some even began test-flying them.
Naturally, class was interrupted each time, and as punishment, we were slapped in the face in the hallway or hit on the thighs with a bamboo stick. (Corporal punishment was common back then.)

Also, when test papers were returned, there were even a few tough guys who would turn their answer sheets into airplanes.

Paper Airplane Tournament

It happened during class one day, when airplane-related corporal punishment was becoming the norm.
I think the classroom was noisier than usual with airplanes.

And the moment someone's airplane hit the blackboard and everyone went "Oh...", the teacher, who had been writing something on the board, turned toward the classroom and said,
just one thing...

"Class is over! If you want to fly them that much, you can fly as many as you want!" and suddenly, it became paper airplane time.

The airplane guys, who had been flying them freely until now,
said, "Then let's have a paper airplane tournament!"
and we decided to hold a competition to see whose could stay in the air the longest.

The rules were simple.
We would fly the airplanes from the second-floor classroom balcony and compete for the flight time until they landed on the ground. The teacher brought a stopwatch used for gym class, and we would launch them on the teacher's signal.

With the start set for five minutes later, the participants (mostly boys) sat at their desks and began folding their own airplanes as they pleased.
Airplanes of various shapes appeared, and everyone flew them from the balcony.

I flew my first model and managed to take first place in the class!
I remember it flying for nearly 90 seconds. It caught the wind just right and drifted through the air.
The teacher praised me.

The X-Day Came Suddenly...

After the paper airplane tournament, the craze faded as if it were a lie.
It seemed that everyone was satisfied once the performance of the airplanes they had each been developing with confidence was suddenly evaluated with a numerical value.

I continued to fold and fly airplanes even after the tournament, but
my first model started being treated as trash, with people saying, "Don't throw garbage."

What was that strange airplane fever all about?

I think it's probably a common story in childhood.
Easy to get fired up, easy to cool down...

It was a cheap fad that was very kind to parents' wallets.

(Bonus) Living environment at the time, etc.

I think there were quite a few vacant lots like the ones in Doraemon. (There were no concrete pipes, though.)
Most of the vacant lots were overgrown with weeds and unmaintained.

I often flew airplanes in those vacant lots, mixed in with the older students.
The place where I lived was a so-called densely populated residential area, a moderately rural place surrounded by fields.
To give you an idea of how dense it was, when I opened my room window, my friend's house window next door was 50-60cm away, and we could open our windows and talk through them night after night.

The neighborhood was overflowing with many children, and after school, you could hear them screaming and shouting.
(Would people say "It's noisy!" now...?)

You could hear the sound of piano practice.
You could also hear the voice of some child singing an anime song.

Everyone was playing catch or baseball on the streets around there.
Of course, we used soft, hollow rubber balls.
The bats were plastic.

In the motor pool (parking lot), we would play baseball or play house on the beds of parked light trucks.
We were never particularly scolded or blamed for it.

It was an environment you can't imagine today. For better or worse, it was tolerant...

One day, an incident occurred in such a town, but that is for another time...

I think there was a natural idea (?) that everyone in the community should protect and raise the children. Other people's mothers would scold other people's children, get angry, give them snacks, or invite them into their homes; it felt like the community was one big family.

After that, complaints from people parking in the motor pool followed one after another, and entry into the motor pool was prohibited. (Well, that's only natural, isn't it...)

That is all for today's story.
Thank you for reading.

See you again for the next boom!