Abstract:

Postmodern consumer culture in Japan posited young, unmarried women as its paradigmatic subject, drawing heavily on their aesthetic sensibilities, affect, and manners of social interaction and communication. My paper analyzes structural relationships between this girl-centered consumer society and post-1970s capitalist regime in Japan, focusing on the function played by female lifecourse narrative in demarcating spatio-temporalities of consumption (girlhood) versus (re)production (motherhood). Contemporary Japan is often noted for the paradoxical co-existence of rigidly controlled and disciplinary system of education and work, and consumer culture that is autonomous, creative, and even anarchic. I will analyze an unexpected complicity as well as tension embedded in this dichotomy by foregrounding its underlying gender politics.

Suggested Background Readings

Yoda, Tomiko. "A Roadmap to Millennial Japan," in South Atlantic Quarterly. (99:4, Fall 2000)

Bauman, Zygmunt. “From the Work Ethic to the Aesthetic of Consumption.” Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. (Open University Press, 1998)