1988 in Japan
overview of Japan-related events during the year of 1988
Events in the year 1988 in Japan. It corresponds to Shōwa 63 (昭和63年) in the Japanese calendar.
Incumbents
Emperor: Shōwa
Prime Minister: Noboru Takeshita (L–Shimane)
Chief Cabinet Secretary: Keizo Obuchi (L–Gunma)
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: Kōichi Yaguchi
President of the House of Representatives: Kenzaburō Hara (L–Hyōgo)
President of the House of Councillors: Masaaki Fujita (L–Hiroshima) until September 30, Yoshihiko Tsuchiya (L–Saitama)
Diet sessions: 112th (regular session opened in December 1987, until May 25), 113th (extraordinary, July 19 to December 28), 114th (regular, December 30 to 1989, June 22)
Governors
Aichi Prefecture: Reiji Suzuki
Akita Prefecture: Kikuji Sasaki
Aomori Prefecture: Masaya Kitamura
Chiba Prefecture: Takeshi Numata
Ehime Prefecture: Sadayuki Iga
Fukui Prefecture: Yukio Kurita
Fukuoka Prefecture: Hachiji Okuda
Fukushima Prefecture: Isao Matsudaira (until 18 September); Eisaku Satō (starting 19 September)
Gifu Prefecture: Yosuke Uematsu
Gunma Prefecture: Ichiro Shimizu
Hiroshima Prefecture: Toranosuke Takeshita
Hokkaido: Takahiro Yokomichi
Hyogo Prefecture: Toshitami Kaihara
Ibaraki Prefecture: Fujio Takeuchi
Ishikawa Prefecture: Yōichi Nakanishi
Iwate Prefecture: Tadashi Nakamura
Kagawa Prefecture: Jōichi Hirai
Kagoshima Prefecture: Kaname Kamada
Kanagawa Prefecture: Kazuji Nagasu
Kochi Prefecture: Chikara Nakauchi
Kumamoto Prefecture: Morihiro Hosokawa
Kyoto Prefecture: Teiichi Aramaki
Mie Prefecture: Ryōzō Tagawa
Miyagi Prefecture: Sōichirō Yamamoto
Miyazaki Prefecture: Suketaka Matsukata
Nagano Prefecture: Gorō Yoshimura
Nagasaki Prefecture: Isamu Takada
Nara Prefecture: Shigekiyo Ueda
Niigata Prefecture: Takeo Kimi
Oita Prefecture: Morihiko Hiramatsu
Okayama Prefecture: Shiro Nagano
Okinawa Prefecture: Junji Nishime
Osaka Prefecture: Sakae Kishi
Saga Prefecture: Kumao Katsuki
Saitama Prefecture: Yawara Hata
Shiga Prefecture: Minoru Inaba
Shiname Prefecture: Nobuyoshi Sumita
Shizuoka Prefecture: Shigeyoshi Saitō
Tochigi Prefecture: Fumio Watanabe
Tokushima Prefecture: Shinzo Miki
Tokyo: Shun'ichi Suzuki
Tottori Prefecture: Yuji Nishio
Toyama Prefecture: Yutaka Nakaoki
Wakayama Prefecture: Shirō Kariya
Yamagata Prefecture: Seiichirō Itagaki
Yamaguchi Prefecture: Toru Hirai
Yamanashi Prefecture: Kōmei Mochizuki
Events
February 10: Dragon Quest III is released for the Family Computer. Over one million copies were sold on the first day and around 300 arrests were made among students absent from school to purchase the game.
March 13: Seikan Tunnel opens, connecting Hokkaido and Honshu by rail for the first time.
March 17: Tokyo Dome completed.
April 4 and 5: Rock band Boøwy hold their last concert in Tokyo Dome and break up.
April 10: Great Seto Bridge opens.
April 16: Studio Ghibli films My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies are released simultaneously.
June 18: Asahi Shimbun breaks the Recruit scandal.
The public source identifies “1988 in Japan” as overview of Japan-related events during the year of 1988. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Japan, overview and Japan-related.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4584825. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1987 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “1988 in Japan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.