Shopping for Art: The New Middle Class' Art Consumption in Modern Japanese Department Stores

Oh, Younjung

doi:10.1093/jdh/epu027

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The expansion of tokonoma into the homes of the new middle class led to a significant increase in demand for artistic objects that could be used for this interior space. Even before opening their Oriental sections, department stores had already supplied works of art needed for tokonoma decorating through "bijutsubu" (art sections), which displayed and sold works of contemporary Japanese artists (Jinno 2015, 89-114;Oh 2014). In 1907, Mitsukoshi was the first to establish an art section, and other department stores followed suit.…”

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Oriental Taste in Imperial Japan: The Exhibition and Sale of Asian Art and Artifacts by Japanese Department Stores from the 1920s through the Early 1940s

Oh¹

2019

J of Asian Stud

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From the 1920s to the early 1940s, Japanese department stores provided Japanese urban middle-class households with art and artifacts from China, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The department stores not merely sold art and artifacts from Japan's Asian neighbors but also promoted the cultural confidence to appreciate and collect them. At the same time, aspiring middle-class customers satisfied their desire to emulate the historical elite's taste for Chinese and other Asian objects by shopping at the department stores. The aesthetic consumption of Asian art and artifacts formulated a privileged position for Japan in the imperial order and presented the new middle class with the cultural capital vital to the negotiation of its social status. This article examines the ways in which department stores marketed “tōyō shumi” (Oriental taste), which played a significant role in the formation of identity for both the imperial state and the new middle class in 1920s and 1930s Japan.

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confidence: 99%