Book launchWednesday 29 February 2012
6:00pm – 7:00pm
The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850-2000
Drinks reception from 8:00pm
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Edited by Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
Much of the existing writing on Japan’s economic rise has concentrated on the production of goods, and has largely neglected the role of the consumers and users of the expanding output of Japanese businesses and workers. While historians of Europe and North America have opened up the ‘world of goods’ and its role in industrialisation and modernisation, Japan is often seen as having little consumption history of its own, distinct from Western paths of development. This volume seeks to change this picture, and brings together studies by Japanese, British and American historians that combine economic, social and cultural analysis of the distinctive historical pathways of consumption in Japan.
Chapters focus on the interactions among individuals, institutions and social structures that have determined the changing pattern of everyday life in Japan since the nineteenth century, viewing consumption history through contexts that range from household labour allocation and gender relations to fashion, food and leisure. The collection thus aims both to broaden the comparative framework within which global consumption history can be studied and to demonstrate some of the ways in which Japanese consumer life followed its own course throughout the process of economic development.
* The book was available on the day at the discounted price of £30.
About the contributors
Dr Penelope Francks
Dr Penelope Francks has been researching and writing on Japanese economic history since the 1970s. She served on the Asian Studies RAE panel in 2001 and 2008 and was chair of the Japan Foundation Endowment Fund Committee from 2005 until 2010. Her chief publications include Technology and Agricultural Development in Prewar Japan (1983), Japanese Economic Development (1992 and sec. ed. 1999), and Rural Economic Development in Japan (2006), and her earlier book on Japanese consumption history, The Japanese Consumer: an Alternative Economic History of Modern Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2009). In 2004, she retired as Reader in Japanese Studies at the University of Leeds to concentrate on research and writing. In addition to her honorary position at Leeds, she held a Visiting Senior Fellowship in the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) for the duration of her project with Professor Hunter and continues as a Research Associate in the Japan Research Centre at SOAS.
Professor Janet Hunter
Professor Janet Hunter is Saji Professor of Economic History and Head of the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Her research interests lie in the economic development of Japan with particular reference to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her major publications include: History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000: Economic Relations (with S. Sugiyama, 2001) and Women and the Labour Market in Japan’s Industrialising Economy: the Textile Market Before the Pacific War (2003; Japanese edition, 2008). She is currently working on the economic impact of natural disasters in Japan, focussing in particular on the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.