‘Japanese Modernity Reconsidered’
Professor Mike Featherstone and Tomoko Tamari published book sections in Japanese Modernity Reconsidered (in Japanese), edited by Professor Kuniharu Tokiyasu, Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo, 2020, Hakutakusha.
Cover: Japanese Modernity Reconsidered, 2020. Edited by Professor Kuniharu Tokiyasu.
‘Questioning Modernity and Problematizing Culture’
Mike Featherstone
Excerpt
This paper discusses the relationship between modernity and culture. Firstly, it examines the family of terms deriving from the modern. Secondly, it asks the question of how to locate modernity – whether it is not just in time, but also in space. ‘Is modernity Western?’ Thirdly, it focuses briefly on the problem of Japanese modernity and Japanese exceptionalism. Fourthly, it outlines the role of culture and experience in modernity. Fifthly, it asks if we can think beyond the modern and whether the aporias of modern culture can offer a vehicle here.
‘Consumer Culture and Modernization in the Early 20th Century Japan’
Tomoko Tamari
Excerpt
Tomoko explores the process of Japanese modernity in late 19th and early 20th century, examining emergence of ‘modern’ consumer society, particularly focusing on the socio-cultural and political roles of the nascent department store. Mitsukoshi was generally acknowledged as the first Japanese department store which took an initiative to implement government-led-reforming lifestyle movement, but also acted as a knowledge bank to provide consumers with not simply new commodities, but also information, images and values. In the early 20th century, department stores were also urban spectacles, well-equipped with advanced technologies, from architectural engineering to interior facilities. The huge bright premises and carefully designed and decorated aesthetic retailing spaces made the department store a new type of urban public sphere, where brought about new modern consumer experiences. The department store also offered not just the classification of commodities, but also knowledge, images and values. Foucault’s concept of episteme could be helpful to better understand this mechanism and to unpack how the spaces both two-dimensional (catalogues) and three-dimensional (architecture) department store act as a ‘tableau’. In this sense, the department store as tableau could not only classify commodities, but also translate them into symbols. Such symbols of commodities could produce an additional value which was often seen as ‘something new’. The department store offered various consumer goods which were perceived as symbols of the ‘modern’ which contains not only economic values, but also ‘new’ cultural values. The department store can, therefore, be seem as a significant social device for people to learn, enjoy and navigate in the ‘shock of the new’ era of Japanese modernization.