30th anniversary celebration looks to link Heisei and Reiwa eras with shared love for purikura.

Life was different before everyone had a smartphone in their pocket. If you were meeting up with people, you had to be on time, since you couldn’t just fire off a text to tell them to wait for you because you were running late. If you were grabbing something to eat, you had to check how to get to the restaurant beforehand, because you couldn’t just pull up a GPS-enabled map. And if you and your friends were having so much fun that you wanted to commemorate the good times by snapping some immediately shareable pics, you couldn’t just-

Oh, wait, you could do that last one pretty easily without a smartphone Or at least you could if you were in Japan once the sticker picture booth craze exploded in the late-’90s. As a matter of fact, for many sociable teens and young 20-somethings of Japan’s Heisei period (1989-2019), no day of fun with friends was complete without a new batch of “print seal” sticker photos, to be swapped and shown off the next day at school or the workplace.

▼ A look back on sticker picture trends from Furyu, one of Japan’s current largest print seal machine makers.

The genesis of the sticker picture craze came with manufacturer Atlus’ Print Club (pronounced “Purinto Kurabu” in Japanese) machine, which was released in in July of 1995 and became such a pop cultural phenomenon that “purikura” pulled off a linguistic feet similar to Kleenex or Band-Aid and became a catch-all term for print seals themselves, regardless of which company’s machine they were taken with. So for the past several months, sticker picture booth maker Furyu has been celebrating the 30th anniversary of print seals, and next month will be hosting the Dear Reiwa, Uchira no Puri-ten By Heisei exhibit event in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya neighborhood.

The event’s name references how the sticker picture boom began in the Heisei days (“Uchira no Puri-ten” means “our sticker picture exhibit”) but is now being picked up by Japanese youths of the Reiwa period, which started in the spring of 2019. The exhibit will consist of three sections, with the Anniversary Zone looking back on the origins of the hobby with a historical timeline, Print Club machine display, and a working pristinely restored Bijin Premium, a popular Furyu booth released in 2007, that visitors can take sticker pictures in, free of charge.

The Puri Play zone will include experience corners showcasing the innovative features that came about during the intense competition between sticker picture booth makers in the Heisei period, such as being equipped with fans that blew dramatic gusts of wind or raised platforms and chairs for more complex poses. Bandai Namco and Sega (the latter of which now owns Atlus’ intellectual properties) are listed as “special supporters” of the 30th anniversary project, suggesting that they might be contributing classic machines for this part of the event. The exhibition will also have a tunnel made of vintage booth curtains for a literal walk down purikura memory lane, as well as an area devoted to the “dark history” of sticker picture fandom, which the planners say will make guests feel ready to “burst from nostalgia and awkwardness.”

▼ Odds are the “dark history” section will be devoted to anecdotes of seemed-like-a-cool-idea-at-the-time teen cringiness, and not recollections of genuine emotional trauma.

And last, the Puri from Here on Out area will be a space in which to check out Furyu’s brand-new Centi:U sticker picture booth, which along with fine-tuning options for camera and lighting angles allows you to, in addition to receiving physical photos, add visual effects and audio to digital versions of the images.

Admission to the event is free, and while supplies last guests will receive not only a Dear Reiwa Uchira no Puri-ten By Heisei sticker, but also a set of eyelash extensions, helping you create a Heisei period-correct aesthetic by channeling the era’s gyaru-inspired fashion sensibilities.

Dear Reiwa Uchira no Puri-ten By Heisei will be taking place from March 20 to April 5 at the Openbase Shibuya event space, which is located on the same block as the Shibuya Parco department store and eight minutes on foot from Shibuya Station’s recently relocated Hachiko Gate.

Event information
Dear Reiwa Uchira no Puri-ten By Heisei / ウチらのプリ展 〜Dear令和 By平成〜
Venue: Openbase Shibuya
Address: Tokyo-to, Shibuya-ku, Udagawa-cho 14-13, Udagawa-cho Building
Open 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
Runs March 20-April 5
Admission: Free
Website

Source: PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times (1, 2)
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