The Japanese House: Material Culture in the Modern Home

ISBN-13: 9781845205171 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 320 str.

Inge Maria Daniels

Opis

In the West, the Japanese house has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style. Is this neat, carefully constructed version of Japanese life in fact a myth?

Inge Daniels goes behind the doors of real Japanese homes to find out how highly private domestic lives are lived in Japan. The book examines every aspect of the home and daily life-from decoration, display, furniture and the tatami mat, to eating, sleeping, gift-giving, recycling and worship.

For students and researchers in anthropology and architecture, The Japanese House re-evaluates contemporary Japanese life through an ethnographic lens, examining key topics of consumption, domesticity and the family. Highly illustrated throughout, the book will appeal to all who those are interested Japanese culture, and in how and why people live the way they do in modern Japan.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION
SPREAD 1: Map with locations and images of exteriors of the homes studied

Chapter 2 HOMES INSIDE OUT
Gates, fences and walls
'We would rather have a nice English garden'
'Everyone needs a garage'
Between the window and the hallway
Red buckets and neighbourhood cooperation
Local communities of limited liability
Conclusion: The inside out
SPREAD 2: Street gardens; green fences and terracotta walls
SPREAD 3: Wifely duties and neighbourhood surveillance

Chapter 3 FEELING AT HOME
'The pleasures of a happy home'
From tatami to chair-based living
The postwar 'LDK home': 1. The sofa and dining table 2. Double beds
'Bathing is my way to relax'
Tatami mats 'A space to relax'
Conclusion: Affectionate ties
SPREAD 4: The choreography of domestic slippers

Chapter 4 TATAMI TASTES
Male domestic taste and sophistication
Full-time and part-time housewives
A national domestic taste? Eclectic alcoves
'New is better': traditional and modern aesthetics
Male minimal design
The exception: a modern aesthetic scheme
'We have "a son in a box''
' Male domestic stereotypes: 'Japanese fathers have no holidays'
Do-it-Yourself
Conclusion: Gender stereotypes
SPREAD 5: Alcoves half full or half empty?

Chapter 5 STUFF AND STORAGE
The ideology of tidiness
Storehouse living: circulation and accumulation
Storage strategies: 1. Expanding the home 2. 'Living among one's furniture'
Furniture walls
Dowries and provisioning
The contemporary starter home
Life cycle rupture points: 'if I had a house like a castle, I would take everything'
Conclusion: Conduits and containers
SPREAD 6: Women and their kimono
SPREAD 7: Destroying and rebuilding the family home

Chapter 6 TROUBLESOME THINGS
Domestic disarray?
Souvenir Cabinets: objects frozen in time and space
Troublesome Things
Commemorative gifts and unique relationships
Ephemeral gifts and the renewal of relationships
Surplus, divestment and informal sociality
Conclusion: pressures and constraints of gift culture
SPREAD 8: The Dolls Festival
SPREAD 9: Bazaars and flea markets

Chapter 7 THE LOCUS OF SPIRITUAL IN THE DOMESTIC
The house-building ceremony
The domestic cycle of 'annual events'
God shelves and auspiciousness
The temporality of luck
Affective and material bonds with the ancestors
A son's duty of care? Inter-generational tensions
New family models
Conclusion: Causality and self-determination
SPREAD 10: Religion as action

Chapter 8 CONCLUSION

Notes
Bibliography
Index

O autorze

Inge Daniels is Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.