Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the transformation in relationships that Russian-speaking migrants in Japan have with consumer goods. The analysis is situated in a discussion about the overall consumer practices and conventions pertaining to the reciprocal exchange of goods in Japan during the past 30 years.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the transformation in relationships that Russian-speaking migrants in Japan have with consumer goods. The 1990s, when many informants in this study left Russia and other post-Soviet countries for Japan, were marked by political and economic turbulence in the migrants' places of origin. Even for those who moved to Japan later, memories of the shortage of consumer goods that they - or their parents, relatives, and friends - experienced constitute a core memory of the pre-migratory past. Drawing on interview data and visits to informants' homes in Japan, this study analyzes the changing trajectory of the relations the migrants have developed with consumer goods in their new country. The analysis is situated in a discussion about the overall consumer practices and conventions pertaining to the reciprocal exchange of goods in Japan during the past 30 years. The researcher examined how initial sentiments, such as people's negative views about their pre-migratory lifestyles and their excitement about the availability of goods, were changed, such that they now value living modestly and getting by with little. For some, these new sentiments are deepened by their correspondence with present-day ideas of simple living, recycling, and being attentive to the earth. Many of the informants were in marital unions in which one spouse was Japanese. They thus found themselves unable to freely choose how to organize their consumer practices, gift exchanges, and the presence of items in their homes. They reported unresolved psychological discomfort regarding the overabundance of consumer goods. The study also explores how the informants negotiated transnational relations pertaining to material things with next-of-kin in their countries of origin, where consumer practices have also shifted significantly in recent years. In addition to a socio-cultural perspective rooted in anthropological methodology, this research incorporates discourses regarding materiality, the agency of objects, and affect.