heavensthunder:

What it’s like for orphans in Japan and what likely happened to Makoto after her parents died is a topic that’s been discussed before, and which I’ve reblogged a post or two about. What really blew my mind in the linked article is the very strong likelihood that Naoko had a specific real-life plane crash in mind when she wrote that particular detail of Makoto’s backstory.

Fortunately, Japan has had relatively few domestic plane crashes that resulted in deaths. Assuming a basis in the real world (which is a fair assumption, thanks in part to the detailed research Ms. Takeuchi did when creating the world of Sailor Moon and for the reasons described below), this makes it possible to narrow down actual dates and give us an age for Makoto at the time the tragedy hit. 

When she first appeared, Makoto was 14 years old, which would put her birth date at December 5, 1977. That limits our window for plane crashes to December 6, 1977 through the late 1980s. During that time, there were three plane crashes in Japan, two of which resulted in fatalities: JAL350 and JAL123. Though either of these are possible, there’s a strong argument for the latter of the two, in 1985. 

JAL350 crashed in 1982, when Makoto would’ve been four years old and probably wouldn’t have retained many memories of her parents. JAL123, on the other hand…

Also, and perhaps most importantly, the tragedy of JAL123 is the greatest single-airplane related tragedy at the time, resulting in a loss of life of all but 4 passengers (two of them children, one of which was 8 years old – close to the age Makoto would have been) and which even to this day is still brought up every year on the anniversary of the crash. At the time that Ms. Takeuchi wrote Sailor Moon, this obviously would have been strong in her mind and in social consciousness. To say “airplane crash” in 1992 would almost certainly be referring to that fateful day in 1985.

JAL123 crashed on August 12, 1985. Makoto would’ve been 7.

I’d honestly never even thought about it, but as Tux Unmasked points out, Mako’s phobia of planes such that she has an instinctive panic response to the sound of a jet engine suggests that she was most likely on the plane with her parents when it crashed.

The Wikipedia article about the crash gives some ideas about what that experience would have been like:

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Why Does Makoto Live Alone?