This multidisciplinary book analyses the contradictory coexistence of consumerism and environmentalism in contemporary Japan. It focuses on the dilemma that the diffusion of the concepts of sustainability and recycling has posed for everyday consumption practices, and on how these concepts have affected, and were affected by, the production and consumption of art. Special attention is paid to the changes in consumption practices and environmental consciousness among the Japanese public that have occurred since the 1990s and in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters of March 2011.

Katarzyna Cwiertka is professor Modern Japan Studies at the University of Leiden.Katarzyna J. Cwiertka is Chair of Modern Japan Studies at Leiden University and an established expert on the food history of modern Japan. Cwiertka is managing co-editor of the journal Global Food History and editor-in-chief of Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.Ewa Machotka is associate professor of Japanese language and culture at Stockholm University.

AcknowledgementsNotes to the ReaderNotes on ContributorsList of FiguresList of TablesIntroduction — Katarzyna J. Cwiertka and Ewa MachotkaConsumptionSustainabilityThe post-bubble era and research on consumptionKonbini, landscape, and sustainable artWorks citedChapter 1: Post-Bubble Japanese Department Stores: The Need to Search for New Paradigms — Hendrik Meyer-OhleAbstractIntroductionDepartment stores in JapanEducating customers: Is my diamond the right size? Am I wearing the right dress?Developing new customer groups: Fashioning the salary man and husband — Imagining the old and the new JapanMangoes on Marine Day: Post-bubble department storesWorks citedWebsites consultedChapter 2: Consumption of Fast Fashion in Japan: Local Brands and Global Environment — Stephanie AssmannAbstractIntroductionBackground: Social stratification and consumer behaviour Declining incomes and consumer expendituresFast Retailing: The outdoor brand UNIQLORyohin Keikaku: The label without a label — Mujirushi Ryohin Fast fashion and sustainabilityInternational competitors: ZARA and H&MA high-end fashion retailer: Louis VuittonThe significance of price, brand, quality, and sustainability: The post-bubble consumerWorks citedCompany websitesChapter 3: Konbini-Nation: The Rise of the Convenience Store in Post-Industrial Japan — Gavin H. WhitelawAbstractIntroductionComing of age with konbiniRelocalizing konbiniConvenience becoming ‘konbini’Shifting perceptionsKonbini panics and convenience concerns‘Konbinize Me’: Waste and want ‘Between’ placesConclusion Works citedChapter 4: Serving the Nation: The Myth of Washoku — Katarzyna J. CwiertkaAbstractIntroductionWhat’s in a name?The UNESCO nominationNational branding and food self-sufficiencyConclusionWorks citedFilm citedWebsites consultedChapter 5: Consuming Domesticity in Post-Bubble Japan — Ofra Goldstein-GidoniAbstractThe Hanako tribe: Single women as hedonistic consumersThe production of new consuming tribes: Women’s magazines at the burst of the bubbleThe new-type housewives as a post-bubble return to ‘traditional’ gender roles? Female domesticity is fun: Marketing the joy of housewifery Tradition in fashionable wear: Designer aprons as symbols of the new femininityFemale beauty and domesticity as a new kind of a national spiritConclusion ?Works citedWebsites consultedChapter 6: The Metamorphosis of Excess: ‘Rubbish Houses’ and the Imagined Trajectory of Things in Post-Bubble Japan — Fabio GygiAbstractIntroductionAttack of the rubbish aunt!Gomi yashiki as the uncannyConsuming the bubbleThe exaltedness of the newRendering absentSecondhandedness and mottainai‘A complicated emotion’: Taguchi’s ‘Jamira’ConclusionWorks citedChapter 7: Robot Reincarnation: Rubbish, Artefacts, and Mortuary Rituals — Jennifer RobertsonAbstractRubbish, art, and artefactsRobots and rubbish: Consumption and disposalRobot reincarnationFilm citedWorks citedWebsites consultedChapter 8: Art and Consumption in Post-Bubble Japan: From Postmodern Irony to Shared Engagement — Gunhild BorggreenAbstractIntroduction: Japan as consumer societyThe artist as ethnographerRepresentations of consumptionArt as consumptionCommunity-based consumptionConclusionWorks cited Websites consultedChapter 9: The Fate of Landscape in Post-War Japanese Art and Visual Culture — Hayashi MichioAbstractA.K.A. Serial Killer and the extinction of landscapePROVOKE and the Discover Japan campaignLee U-fan’s aesthetics: Phenomenology and structuralismKawabata Yasunari and his Hawai’i lectureKaratani Kojin’s theory of landscape Long Epilogue: Sugimoto Hiroshi and the notion of post-landscapeWorks citedFilm citedWebsites consulted[inhoudsopgave gaat nog verder, maar kader is te klein]