"With the postwar economic recovery, a succession of three treasures of family life-a joke on the 'Three Regalia' of the imperial family-graviated upward in value until by the late 1960s they had become the 'three Cs,' meaning color television, a car, and a 'cooler,' the term for an air conditioner. Since then general affluence has made the joke drop out of use."
—Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 224.
RSS