近代における消費の変容 : 勧工場から百貨店へ

論文(Article)

In the Japanese modern era, the experience of consumption had changed drastically by the flood of new commodities which had imported from the West and made by newly formed modern industry. This article scrutinizes the transformation of experience of consumption around 1900s and investigates the characteristics of modern consumer society. Firstly I focus on the experience of Kankoba , a type of supermarket which was famous in the city from 1880-1910. Although Kankoba had been originally built by the government in order to modernize shopping custom, it became recognized as a place of spectacular in the city, like an old typed bazaar, fair booth and small exhibitions which had been actively held in Edo era. In Kankoba , pale imitations of foreign goods and gadgets were accumulated, and middle and lower class in the city enjoyed mainly seeing varieties of such merchandise. In other words, this newly invented shopping place compensated experience of consumption of city residents which didn’t have enough purchasing power yet. However, around 1900s there had grown middle class family who could purchase industry products and foreign merchandise in everyday life. In order to meet the need of such people and to affirm their lifestyle, department stores developed. Department stores not only sold high quality products, but also elaborated fine advertisement and often held cultural exhibitions, concerts and plays for city residents. That is, department stores functioned as a kind of infrastructure to enrich the cultural life in the city and provided growing middle class families with an ideal leisure place in the city.

By scrutinizing the structure of shopping experience in department stores, this paper claims that the transformation to consumption society had started around 1900s in Japan and that it related in depth to the social formation of middle class lives in cities. The growth of the consumption experience in that era supported the newly formed life style of middle class families who had departed from the large family ”Ie” and compensated their anxieties of their living in cities. This consideration leads to more understanding of the crucial relationships betweenthe growth of consumer society and the historical transformation of lives in cities in Japan.