The historical consumer : consumption and everyday life in Japan, 1850-2000
- New York: Palgrave Macmillan, c2012
- xiii, 329 pages : illustrations ; 24cm
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.