Fabricating Consumers - The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-520-26785-5
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 19, 304 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 550 g

Reihe: Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes

Since its early days of mass production in the 1850s, the sewing machine has been intricately connected with the global development of capitalism. Andrew Gordon traces the machine’s remarkable journey into and throughout Japan, where it not only transformed manners of dress, but also helped change patterns of daily life, class structure, and the role of women. As he explores the selling, buying, and use of the sewing machine in the early to mid-twentieth century, Gordon finds that its history is a lens through which we can examine the modern transformation of daily life in Japan. Both as a tool of production and as an object of consumer desire, the sewing machine is entwined with the emergence and ascendance of the middle class, of the female consumer, and of the professional home manager as defining elements of Japanese modernity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gordon, Andrew

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Part One: Singer in Japan
1. Meiji Machines

2. The American Way of Selling

3. Selling and Consuming Modern Life

4. Resisting Yankee Capitalism

Part Two: Sewing Modernity in War and Peace
5. War Machines at Home

6. Mechanical Phoenix

7. A Nation of Dressmakers

Conclusion

Appendix: Some Notes on Time-Use Studies

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Andrew Gordon is Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard University. His previous books include Labor and Imperial Democracy in Japan (UC Press) and A Modern History of Japan.