Review
This impressive study of the modern Japanese home takes the reader into the domestic worlds of middle-class men and women, showing how aesthetic practices are shaped by national ideologies regarding gender and the family, as well as by a sense of the past encountering the transformative energies of modernization. David Morgan, Duke University Should be widely read and loudly applauded. Design and Culture This is an absolutely fascinating book - well written, superbly researched inside Japanese homes and written with passion. Without a doubt the best book I have read on modern Japan. Brighton & Hove Anglo Japanese Network There are many more conclusions to be drawn from the rich materials presented and I recommend this book to everyone with an interest in Japan, material culture, architecture, and visual methods. Furthermore, it is a prime example of what ethnography can achieve (and living quality surveys etc. cannot). Home Cultures
Product Description
In the West the Japanese house has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style. Is this neat, carefully constructed version of Japanese life in fact a myth? Inge Daniels goes behind the doors of real Japanese homes to find out how highly private domestic lives are lived in Japan. The book examines every aspect of the home and daily life-from decoration, display, furniture and the tatami mat, to eating, sleeping, gift-giving, recycling and worship. For students and researchers in anthropology and architecture, The Japanese House re-evaluates contemporary Japanese life through an ethnographic lens, examining key topics of consumption, domesticity and the family. Highly illustrated throughout, the book will appeal to all those who are interested in Japanese culture, and in how and why people live the way they do in modern Japan.
About the Author
Inge Daniels is Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford
