Privatization, Commodification and Transformation in Japanese

CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by CiteSeerX International Journal of Consumer Studies ISSN 1470-6423 Privatization, commodification and transformation in Japanese housing: ephemeral house – eternal homeijcs_803 558..565 Richard Ronald1,2 1OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands 2Department of Japanese and Korean Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands Keywords Abstract Bounded space, commodification, home, housing, Japan, privatization. The space and place of the Japanese home holds an iconic status in both foreign and indigenous understandings of Japanese life. The architectural forms and bounded spaces of Correspondence Japanese houses have historically been embedded in social practices that integrate indi- Richard Ronald, OTB Instituut, TU Delft, viduals with hierarchical orders of space and social relations moving outwards from the Jaffalaan 9, 2628BX, Delft, the Netherlands. house to community. Housing units and residential neighbourhoods have, however, under- E-mail: [email protected] gone considerable transformation in the last century. Homes have been increasingly priva- tized, commodified and marketized, while the features of housing and neighbourhoods doi: 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00803.x have been intensively modernized and urbanized. This paper considers transformations in the form of Japanese housing and the extent to which contemporary housing production and consumption mediates historically embedded notions of domestic relations and space. Introduction have been built to be non-durable. The second part of the paper thus considers the shape and construction of built units, starting Houses are not simply shelters, but spaces that shape and are with pre-modern forms and accounting for transformations in shaped by social interactions and cultural values. Japanese dwellings through Japan’s rapid urbanization and modernization. houses, in particular, have been identified as culturally distinct, Contemporary vernacular housing is typically constructed from and their inimitability bound up with parallel discourses, both concrete and utilizes complex construction technologies, but none- within and without Japan, on the eternal Japanese family theless still features rush matting and paper screens that represent (Daniels, 2001; Ozaki and Lewis, 2006; Ronald, 2007). Despite ‘traditional’ aesthetics and reproduce spatial boundaries evident in such discourses, the physical spaces of homes, the organization pre-modern housing. Moreover, while Japanese housing has been of households and the shape of residential neighbourhoods have highly commodified and marketized, it continues to be consumed undergone continuous and radical transformation in Japan. The as a relatively disposable object, with built units being cyclically relationship between Japanese society and the built form of the demolished and replaced. The final part of this paper considers, on home is more effectively addressed as a dynamic phenomenon, one side, how Japanese homes have been transformed into modern characterized by considerable reactivity to changing social con- housing goods, and on the other, how and why they retain indig- ditions. This paper examines this process of transformation, enous features. which, while reflecting indigenous dwelling and construction practices, also illustrates processes of commodification and priva- The eternal home tization of housing objects evident across developed societies. At the same time, unusual features of modern Japanese housing that In the Anglo-American literature, homes and domestic spaces perpetuate or recreate ‘traditional’ forms are also illustrated and have been primarily discussed by architects, social historians and their significance addressed. environmental psychologists. Qualitative research has been rare This paper considers metamorphoses in the Japanese home and interpretations of domestic spaces even rarer (Cieraad, 1999). from sociological and architectural perspectives. The first section Studies have been strongly rooted in the West and focused on the highlights the relevance of the home in understanding social prac- evolution of the separation between private and public spatial tices. The space and notion of ‘house’ has been understood in realms. The setting has been an occidental urbanism that can be Japan to constitute a particular sociality and continuity, defining traced back to 17th century Europe (Rybczynski, 1986). Houses in how family members relate to each other, which forms the basis non-Western contexts have been treated in terms of exotic spaces, of relationships beyond the place of home. The continuity of this reinforcing the notion that industrialization and urbanization killed conceptually ‘eternal’ house contrasts starkly with the ‘ephemo- off ‘residual popular symbolism’ in the West (Cieraad, 1991). rality’ of Japanese dwellings themselves as historically, houses There is considerable evidence, nonetheless, that decoration and 558 International Journal of Consumer Studies 33 (2009) 558–565 © The Author Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd R. Ronald Transformations in Japanese housing ritual associated with contemporary Western domestic spaces con- to expulsion. The word uchi is another signifier for one’s home, tinue to play a central part in social and cultural relations (Miller, with the house thus constituting the primary physical marker of 1995). uchi and soto distinctions. Japanese domestic spaces have been typically treated as exotic The significance of the contrast between inside and outside is in Western architectural appraisals (see Daniels, 2001), although not specific to Japan. Indeed, the spatial demarcation of homes indigenous architects and historians have also, on the whole, as private and separate from public space outside has long been culturally essentialized the vernacular features of modern and central to discussions of domestic spaces in European societies pre-modern homes.1 However, contemporary Japanese houses [Van Gennep, (1909) 1981; Rosselin, 1999]. Moreover, the notion demonstrate a similar orientation towards domestic privatism and of public impurity that drove the specialization of hygienic tasks divisions between private and public spaces. While spatial distinc- inside the home, considered the only place adequately safe and tions developed in terms of less familiar architectural boundaries, clean, is also strongly evident in Western contexts (Douglas, they represent parallel (re)negotiations in the meaning of space 1979). Nevertheless, anthropological analyses have forwarded the that has occurred in both reflective contrast to and isolation from idea that the uchi–soto axis carries greater significance and con- Western housing practices. While housing has been increasingly stitutes a key polemic in Japanese culture around which children commodified in terms of capitalist economy, domestic spatial are socialized (Hendry, 1992). transformations have been very different from those demonstrated In hegemonic Japanese discourses, houses embody the harmony in West European and North American homes. Essentially, this and continuity of the family within, which connects to wider paper examines these developments in the industrially modernized society without in terms of hierarchical extensions of the uchi non-occidental context of Japan, which both mirror and contrast to boundary. Submission or loyalty to one’s family is transferred to those found in Western countries. broader categories of uchi at regimented steps in the life course Although houses are often taken to be rather mundane artefacts, to include secondary groups made up of neighbours, schoolmates dwellings give material shape to norms and constitute the main and colleagues, and ultimately fellow national subjects. Histori- locus of association between individuals, households and the cally, this relationship between house, family and society has been wider community. How the space of the house contains and struc- emphasized in nationalistic discourses. Writing in the early 20th tures household and family relationships reflect and reinforce cul- century, the cultural historian Watsuji pays special attention to tural values. For Lawrence (1996), the space of the home and its the house: ‘The concept of house in Japan takes on a unique and boundaries come to regulate daily affairs and interactions, which important significance as, if you like, the community of all com- for Bourdieu (1977) express and mediate social relationships that munities...Thehouse marks the realm of inside and outside as underpin the social system. Ozaki and Lewis (2006) thus argue unmistakably different. The house continues in Japan...notjust that physical and spatial boundaries in the home are ‘concrete as a formal entity but as a determinant of the Japanese way of life’ manifestations of social classifications...internalized by people [1988 (1935), p. 5]. While the home is considered a locus of and experienced phenomenologically’ (p. 91). Moreover, they identity in most societies, what is notable in the Japanese case is emphasize that the order of space in Japanese houses is distinct its explicit centrality in discourses on Japanese social sensibilities, from those in other societies and feature prominently in regulating both emotional and spatial. social norms and cultural values. In Japanese, the word ie denotes Discussing Japanese houses in terms of ie and uchi–soto pro- the physical structure of the home as well

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