‘Translating Cultures: Issue on Negotiating Social, Artistic and Scientific Exchanges’ Workshop

The Translating Cultures: Issue on Negotiating Social, Artistic and Scientific Exchanges Workshop was held at Waseda University, Tokyo, on January 15, 2020.

This event was organised by Dr Naomi Matsumoto (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Taka Oshigiri (University of West Indies, At Mona, Jamaica), focusing on exchange knowledge between Japan and the West through the concept of translation. The project is based on an interdisciplinary approach (museology, cultural history, literature, medical history and sociology) and expected to explore a complex knowledge formation process in the context of globalization.

Image: Waseda University event poster

Tomoko was invited to give a talk for the event. Her paper was entitled, ‘Consumer Culture and Japanese Modernization in the early 20th Century: The Birth of Department Store’.

Abstract

The paper explores how nascent consumer culture developed in the context of Japanese modernization, paying particularly an attention to department store where was an emerging public space to provide modern lifestyles with new ideas and consumer experiences. Taking up the historical development of Mitsukoshi department store as a case study, the paper attempts to reveal its significant social, cultural and political role in creating new lifestyles for Japanese modernization. Focusing on Mitsukoshi’s innovative merchandising, the paper applies Bourdieu’s notion of ‘cultural intermediaries’ in order to examine the ways

commodities shift between practical and symbolic/aesthetic value. Also drawing on Foucault’s ‘The Order of Things’, the paper considers dynamics of knowledge of things and modes of classification in the context of the socio-cultural roles of the modern department store.