House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930

Harvard East Asian Monographs #223

by Jordan Sand

A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artifact, a material extension of its occupants' lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artifact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era.

As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally related house and family began to break down. Even where the traditional class markers surrounding the house persisted, they became vessels for new meanings, as housing was resituated in a new nexus of relations. The house as artifact and the artifacts it housed were affected in turn. The construction and ornament of houses ceased to be stable indications of their occupants' social status, the home became a means of personal expression, and the act of dwelling was reconceived in terms of consumption. Amid the breakdown of inherited meanings and the fluidity of modern society, not only did the increased diversity of commodities lead to material elaboration of dwellings, but home itself became an object of special attention, its importance emphasized in writing, invoked in politics, and articulated in architectural design. The aim of this book is to show the features of this culture of the home as it took shape in Japan.

Genres: Japan, History, Architecture, Japanese History, Nonfiction

482 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[CL Chu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am ambitious work covering home and family, household and urbanism in Meiji and Taisho Japan. The gender and empire parts should be definitely expanded while the somewhat repetitive survey of architectural style can be halved without undermining the core message (ie the construction of middle class consumerism through suburban expansion and combination of Japanese and Western styles). Recommend read Chapter 1-4, 6, and 10.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rigorous and well-structured historical research work, and it also offers an opportunity for me to reconsider the concept of “home” in a new light. However, when the author shifts the focus of the study from specific architectural details to the more abstract realms of aesthetics and culture, the analytical framework seems to overly rely on Bourdieu’s theory of class competition.

[Yas Poop · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve never read such a long book with such little purpose. Was Japan just trying to become more Western? Yes but no, and it just goes on like that for 400 pages. The ability to focus on the most minute details with only a sentence toward the influence of colonialism or actual politics every 150 pages is mind boggling to me.

[abby]

read for history of japanese popular culture and everyday life

[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really rich, and great sense of reading spaces and materials. But at almost five hundred pages...Really? The table of contents is a literary work itself, so I recommend approaching this book as a kind of choose your own adventure novel.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

skimmed. totally awesome book. Bourdieu-an theory of practice functions as the thread to tie the narratives about the emerging domesticity ... will read this book in detail soon. totally worth your time.

[Benemint · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why this book is popular and important. It is a good solid history book. It is just not my kind.