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Accepted Paper:
Japan boom: nationalism and consumerism in 1950s Japan
Kim Brandt
(Columbia University)
This paper examines the "Japan Boom," or the 1950s popularity of goods and services celebrating native culture, to show how the postwar development of consumerist nationalism--or nationalist consumerism--contributed to Japan's transwar rise as a world power.
Paper long abstract:
My paper examines what I am calling the “Japan Boom,” or the 1950s popularity of goods and services celebrating native culture, to argue that for many ordinary Japanese, the acquisition of habits of consumption beyond the subsistence level was closely linked to nationalism. In making this argument, I seek to deepen our understanding of the so-called economic miracle of the 1960s. The conventional account of Japan’s recovery after defeat and occupation has long focused on rising industrial productivity and U.S. patronage, with emphasis on the export of manufactured goods to Western markets. Until recently, the rapid growth of a domestic market for such goods was largely taken for granted—much as if consumerism were a natural outcome of growth, rather than a basic factor driving it. In somewhat similar fashion, the tendency has been to assume that popular Japanese nationalism (re)emerged as a consequence of economic growth, rather than preceding or even promoting it. By exploring the linkage between early postwar consumerism and nationalism, I show how consumerist nationalism—or nationalist consumerism—developed in the 1950s to mobilize society once again for international competition and the drive to global status and power.