Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Households and Living Standards in the Literature -- Chapter 3: The Context of Women’s Work and Household Labour in Japan -- Chapter 4: Housework and the Nature of Consumption Goods -- Chapter 5: Conclusion.

This book explores the rise of consumerism and the expanding variety of goods available in Japan. Japan is placed within the comparative context of the 'consumer revolution' in Europe and North America, contributing to the analysis of the ways in which consumption and everyday life change in the...

This text offers an accessible guide to the ways in which our growing knowledge of development in early-modern and modernising Japan can throw light on the paths that industrialisation was eventually to take across the globe. It has long been taken as read that the industrial revolution was the...