Assembled in Japan

Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer
1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-21939-7
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 317 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Assembled in Japan investigates one of the great success stories of the twentieth century: the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. Contrary to mainstream interpretation, Simon Partner discovers that behind the meteoric rise of Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and other electrical goods companies was neither the iron hand of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry nor a government-sponsored export-led growth policy, but rather an explosion of domestic consumer demand that began in the 1950s.

This powerful consumer boom differed fundamentally from the one under way at the same time in the United States in that it began from widespread poverty and comparatively miserable living conditions. Beginning with a discussion of the prewar origins of the consumer engine that was to take off under the American Occupation, Partner quickly turns his sights on the business leaders, inventors, laborers, and ordinary citizens who participated in the broadly successful effort to create new markets for expensive, unfamiliar new products.

Throughout, the author relates these pressure-cooker years in Japan to the key themes of twentieth-century experience worldwide: the role of technology in promoting social change, the rise of mass consumer societies, and the construction of gender in advanced industrial economies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Partner, Simon

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Fertigungsindustrie Spitzentechnologiesektor
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1 Electrifying Japan:Techno-Nationalism and the Rise of the Mass Society

2 Reenvisioning Japan

3 The Vision of America:Bringing Television to Japan

4 The Technologies of Desire

5 Creating the "Bright Life"

6 Nimble Fingers: The Story of the Transistor Radio

Conclusion

Appendix: Tables

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Simon Partner is Assistant Professor of History at Duke University and author of Saying Yes to Japanese Investment (1992) and Mergers and Acquisitions Manual (1991).