Building up Steam as Consumers: Women, Rice Cookers and the Consumption of Everyday Household Goods in Japan

Helen Macnaughtan

Chapter 4 in The Historical Consumer, 2012, pp 79-104 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Consumption in Japan, as elsewhere, is strongly gendered. While patterns of consumption have evolved a great deal since the mid-nineteenth century, the role of women and gender in consumption has remained a central issue, particularly in the context of the rise of the housewife and breadwinner-homemaker model. Scholars have analysed women’s association with consumption, and why women across the globe have become the main shoppers and consumers (de Grazia, 1996; de Vries, 2008). Research on gender and consumption in regions such as the United States and Europe has highlighted the relationship between production and consumption. With the separation of home and work over the course of industrial development came a gendered division of labour, within which men’s roles and responsibilities became defined by the public domain and by productive work, while women’s roles and responsibilities became defined by the private domain and by ‘non-work’ activities, mainly comprising housework, childrearing, maintaining family life, leisure and consumption (Costa, 1994). Francks (2009b, pp. 140–41) notes that in Japan ‘… growth in consumption in the forms that it took could not be divorced from the shifting patterns of work and family organization and, in particular, from changes in the role of women within the household and the labor force.’ This development has earlier origins, but occurred in Japan most markedly from the 1950s.

Keywords: Japanese Woman; Household Appliance; Japanese Consumer; Toshiba Corporation; Steamed Rice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-36734-0_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230367340

DOI: 10.1057/9780230367340_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().