The Empire of Fashion: Taste, Gender, and Nation in Modern Japan

Abstract

Following from the work of Henri Lefebvre, I emphasize how the impact of capitalism and the intensification of fashion created a new awareness of the concept of everyday life in modern Japan. I analyze the way in which a peripheral elite disaffected with the government criticized the excessive Westernizing tendencies of the Japanese state and promoted the congruity of everyday life and national culture through the "invention of tradition." In this way, they constructed an aesthetic of everyday life as a cultural tradition to reinforce a shared sense of national identity. My analysis thus centers on a process of contesting nationalisms, whereby the cultural nation was imagined in opposition to the modern, rational state. As a consequence, a shared cultural identity was invented through the commercialization and consumption of tradition and the aestheticization of the culture of everyday life.