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Inconspicuous Consumption: Sake, Beer, and the Birth of the Consumer in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Penelope Francks
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Abstract

The growth of consumption and the emergence of the consumer have become major fields of study in the history of Europe and North America but have been largely neglected by historians of Japan, especially economic ones. This paper argues that, in Japan as elsewhere, the “birth of the consumer” predated the onset of industrialization—hence was not simply a function of the opening of the country to Western modernity—and that the growth of consumption, of “indigenous” as well as “foreign” goods, went on to represent an integral part of the process of economic development. This argument is illustrated by a case study of growth and change in the “ordinary consumption” of food and drink, and in particular of sake, a “traditional” product that emerged as a major consumer good, and of beer, the “foreign” product that was to become, alongside sake, one of the necessities of modern Japanese life.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 135 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2009

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