What role does consumption play in Japanese lives? In this study of consumer behaviour, an anthropologist explores Japan through the eyes of Japanese researchers and discovers patterns of change that are both uniquely Japanese and shared by consumers in other advanced industrial nations.

What role does consumption play in Japanese lives that are more than study, work and shopping? How have those lives changed since World War II as Japan has wrestled with the meaning of white-collar careers, women spreading their wings, changing family values, a shrinking birth rate, an aging population? This book explores Japan through the eyes of Japanese researchers and discovers patterns of change that are both uniquely Japanese and shared by consumers in other advanced industrial nations.

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Business and Management provides a comprehensive overview of management and business processes and practices in Japanese companies. The contributors combine theoretical findings and research results with a practical and contemporary view on how corporations and firms are managed in Japan. The handbook is divided into eight sections covering: historical perspectives on Japanese management; structure and theory of the Japanese firm; the corporate environment in Japan; the Japanese work environment; the Japanese market; manufacturing and logistics; interaction and communication; the future of Japanese management. This book is an essential reference resource for students and scholars working on Japanese companies, the Japanese market-place, Japanese consumers, or management processes in the Japanese firm. The book also provides an interesting and informative read for managers who need to deepen their knowledge on Japanese business processes.

Today Japan is still the second largest and most important consumer market in the world. This book discusses the development of Japanese consumerism, particularities of Japanese consumer behaviour and consumer rights, new consumer groups and emerging trend in the Japanese market.

This innovative volume brings together contributions from leading experts in the study of luxury to present the full range of perspectives on luxury business, from a variety of social science approaches. Topics include conceptual foundations and the evolution of the luxury industry; the production of luxury goods; luxury branding and marketing; distributing luxury; globalization and markets; and issues of morality, inequality, and environmental sustainability. The Oxford Handbook of Luxury Business is a necessary resource for all students and researchers of the field as well as for forward-thinking industry professionals.

Colonel Sanders, Elvis, Mickey Mouse, and Jack Daniels have been enthusiastically embraced by Japanese consumers in recent decades. But rather than simply imitate or borrow from the West, the Japanese reinterpret and transform Western products and practices to suit their culture. This entertaining and enlightening book shows how in the process of domesticating foreign goods and customs, the Japanese have created a culture in which once-exotic practices (such as ballroom dancing) have become familiar, and once- familiar practices (such as public bathing) have become exotic. Written by scholars from anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the book ranges from analyses of Tokyo Disneyland and the Japanese passion for the Argentinean tango to discussions of Japanese haute couture and the search for an authentic nouvelle cuisine japonaise. These topics are approached from a variety of perspectives, with explorations of the interrelations of culture, ideology, and national identity and analyses of the roles that gender, class, generational, and regional differences play in the patterning of Japanese consumption. The result is a fascinating look at a dynamic society that is at once like and unlike our own.

The bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s shook the very foundation of the post-war economic 'miracle' and marked the beginning of a gradual shift in the environmental consciousness of the Japanese. Yet, it by no means removed consumption from the pivotal position it occupied within Japanese society. Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan argues that consumption in Japan today is no longer simply a component of everyday economic activities, but rather a reflection of a society guided by the 'logic of late capitalism'. The volume pins down the contradictory nature of the setting in which consuming occurs in Japan today: the veneration of material comfort and convenience on the one hand, and the new rhetoric of recycling and energy conservation on the other. Theoretical insights developed as part of an art-historical enquiry, such as notions of socially engaged art and its critique, offer a new paradigm for investigating this dilemma. By combining case studies analysing the production and consumption of contemporary art with ethnographic material related to ordinary commodities and shopping, this volume provides a novel, transdisciplinary approach to exploring how a 'society of consumers' operates in post-bubble Japan and how contemporary life is a 'consuming project'.