Research Catalog

Fabricating consumers : the sewing machine in modern Japan

Title: Fabricating consumers : the sewing machine in modern Japan / Andrew Gordon.
Author: Gordon, Andrew, 1952-
Publication: Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, ©2012.

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Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Use in library	HD9971.5.S483 J33 2012	Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 285 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

Since its early days of mass production in the 1850s, the sewing machine has been intricately connected with the global development of capitalism. Andrew Gordon traces the machine's remarkable journey into and throughout Japan, where it not only transformed manners of dress, but also helped change patterns of daily life, class structure, and the role of women. As he explores the selling, buying, and use of the sewing machine in the early to mid-twentieth century, Gordon finds that its history is a lens through which we can examine the modern transformation of daily life in Japan. Both as a tool of production and as an object of consumer desire, the sewing machine is entwined with the emergence and ascendance of the middle class, of the female consumer, and of the professional home manager as defining elements of Japanese modernity.

Series Statement

Asia: local studies/global themes ; no. 19

Uniform Title

Asia--local studies/global themes ; 19.

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Pt. 1. Singer in Japan. Meiji machines -- The American way of selling -- Selling and consuming modern life -- Resisting Yankee capitalism -- pt. 2. Sewing modernity in war and peace. War machines at home -- Mechanical phoenix -- A nation of dressmakers.

ISBN

9780520267855
0520267850

LCCN

2011019065

OCLC

ocn712114154
712114154
SCSB-1618931

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library