The Japanese House Material Culture in the Modern Home

by Daniels, Inge

• ISBN13: 9781845205164
• ISBN10: 1845205162
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Map with locations and images of exteriors of the homes studied

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

Street gardens; green fences and terracotta walls

Wifely duties and neighbourhood surveillance

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

The choreography of domestic slippers

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

Alcoves half full or half empty?

Stuff and Storage

The ideology of tidiness

Storehouse living: circulation and accumulation

Storage strategies:

Expanding the home

'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

Women and their kimono

Destroying and rebuilding the family home

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

The Dolls Festival

Bazaars and flea markets

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

Religion as action

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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