The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850–2000

338 Pages·2012·4.189 MB·English

by  Penelope Francks, Janet Hunter (eds.)

The Historical Consumer

The Historical Consumer
Consumption and Everyday Life in
Japan, 1850–2000
Edited by
Penelope Francks
Honorary Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Leeds, UK
and
Janet Hunter
Saji Professor of Japanese Economic History,
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Palgrave
macmillan
Selection and Editorial Matter © Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter 2012
Individual Chapters © the contributors 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-27366-5
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First published 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-32413-2 ISBN 978-0-230-36734-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230367340
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
Contents
List of Tables vii
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Contributors xii
Note on Transliteration xiii
1 Introduction: Japan’s Consumption History in
Comparative Perspective 1
Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter
Part I Gender, the Household and Consumption
2 The Role of Housework in Everyday Life: Another
Aspect of Consumption in Modern Japan 27
Masayuki Tanimoto
3 Like Bamboo Shoots after the Rain: The Growth of
a Nation of Dressmakers and Consumers 56
Andrew Gordon
4 Building up Steam as Consumers: Women, Rice Cookers
and the Consumption of Everyday Household Goods
in Japan 79
Helen Macnaughtan
Part II Tradition, Modernity and the
Growth of Consumption
5 Japanese Modernisation and the Changing Everyday
Life of the Consumer: Evidence from Household Accounts 107
Satoru Nakanishi and Tomoko Futaya
6 Sweetness and Empire: Sugar Consumption in Imperial Japan 127
Barak Kushner
v
vi Contents
7 K imono Fashion: The Consumer and the Growth
of the Textile Industry in Pre-War Japan 151
Penelope Francks
8 Reviving Tradition: Patients and the Shaping of Japan’s
Traditional Medicines Industry 176
Maki Umemura
Part III Spaces and Pathways of Consumption
9 G etting on a Train: Railway Passengers and the Growth
of Train Travel in Meiji Japan 207
Naofumi Nakamura
10 People and Post Offices: Consumption and Postal Services
in Japan from the 1870s to the 1970s 235
Janet Hunter
11 M ail-Order Retailing in Pre-War Japan: A Pathway of
Consumption Before the Emergence of the Mass Market 259
Isamu Mitsuzono
12 From Corporate Playground to Family Resort: Golf
as Commodity in Post-War Japan 284
A ngus Lockyer
13 H istory and the Study of Consumerism:
A Historian of the West Looks to Japan 306
Beverly Lemire
Index 325
Tables
2.1 Allocation of labour and housework within a
farming household in Tottori Prefecture, 1918 33
2.2 Average housework patterns across 44 farming
households 35
2.3 A ttributes of household members engaged in housework 36
2.4 D escriptive statistics of farming households in
Economic Survey of Farming Households, 1929
and 1930 38
2.5 Determinants of housework hours 39
2.6 Number of domestic servants per 100 households,
1920 46
2.7 Family composition by employment status, Tokyo
City, 1934 49
2.8 Domestic servants by industry and age, 1920 50
2.9 Number of domestic servants per 1,000 persons,
Japan and the UK 52
5.1 Food expenditure, X family 111
5.2 Clothing expenditure, X family 113
5.3 Medical expenditure, X family 115
5.4 Educational expenditure, X family 116
5.5 F ood expenditure, K family 118
5.6 Clothing expenditure, K family 120
5.7 Medical expenditure, K family 122
5.8 Educational expenditure, K family 123
7.1 Textiles and fabric production in the domestic
economy 154
8.1 P opular uses of Kanpō medicine 192
8.2 Most commonly prescribed Kanpō medicines 193
9.1 Fare tables of Japanese railways 214
9.2 U se of transport facilities by Nagae Junichi: 1891, 1892,
and 1894 217
9.3 T ransport fares paid by Nagae Junichi in 1891 and 1892 223
9.4 Modes of transport used by Noda Utarō in 1902 227
9.5 Yasukawa Keiichirō’s places of lodging, 1899–1902 229
9.6 Modes of transport used by Yasukawa Keiichirō, 1899
and 1906 230
vii
viii List of Tables
11.1 Number of COD parcels: various countries 262
11.2 Ratio of mail-order sales to total retail sales 263
11.3 Kyoto’s share of the domestic market
for green tea 278
12.1 Golf courses and rounds played, 1957–1992 291
Illustrations
Map
9.1 Fukuoka prefecture in 1890 211
Figures
2.1 Proportion of female workers engaged in 34 hours or
less per week, 1955 31
2.2 Distribution of housework hours in various types of
household, 1941 43
2.3 A housewife working with a domestic servant, c. 1930 48
2.4 N umber of domestic servants by GDP, Japan and the
UK compared 51
3.1 Newspaper sewing column 72
4.1 Production of selected home appliances, 1960–2004 86
4.2 Value of selected home appliances production, 1960–2004 87
4.3 Production of electric rice cookers, 1970 and 1985–2004 88
4.4 Development of the electric rice cooker by Toshiba,
1955–2005 89
4.5 Toshiba advertising their first electric rice cooker, 1955 92
4.6 Toshiba selling their first electric rice cooker in a
Japanese department store, c. 1955/56 93
6.1 A sweet-seller in Meiji-period Tokyo 132
6.2 Sweet-sellers in colonial Korea 137
7.1 Young women displaying their finery on an inter-war
high street 162
7.2 Shopping for kimono textiles in an inter-war department
store 170
8.1 Number of Kanpō publications, 1868–1977 187
8.2 Value of Kanpō medicine production, 1976–2005 188
8.3 Mass produced, granulated extracts of a prescription
Kanpō medicine, Shikunshitō 189
8.4 Physicians using Kanpō medicines, 1979–1989 192
8.5 Physicians using Kanpō medicines, 1993–2007 196
9.1 The waiting room at Tokyo-Shiodome (Shinbashi)
station, 1873 209
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