This thread has a poll so it's already been bumped, but I think Late Showa to the Bubble period is too long of a time to consider as one coherant whole... If you study the dynamism of the bubble economy of Japan, and the following years post-bubble, which probably belong as part of the bubble econonomy period, the period of the bubble, and it's decline... were probably the hey-day of the modern-Japanese culture... I see them as a seperate entity, based on what people were spending their money on, versus the culture of keitai that exists now...

My personal favourite is probably the above, but more or less, the period of time of the ousting of the Tokugawa shogunate & the Meiji restoration era are complex and very fascinating.