2011
First Published
4.06
Average Rating
304
Number of Pages
Since its early days of mass production in the 1850s, the sewing machine has been intricately connected with the global development of capitalism. Andrew Gordon traces the machine’s remarkable journey into and throughout Japan, where it not only transformed manners of dress, but also helped change patterns of daily life, class structure, and the role of women. As he explores the selling, buying, and use of the sewing machine in the early to mid-twentieth century, Gordon finds that its history is a lens through which we can examine the modern transformation of daily life in Japan. Both as a tool of production and as an object of consumer desire, the sewing machine is entwined with the emergence and ascendance of the middle class, of the female consumer, and of the professional home manager as defining elements of Japanese modernity.
Avg Rating
4.06
Number of Ratings
16
5 STARS
31%
4 STARS
44%
3 STARS
25%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Andrew Gordon
Author · 7 books
A specialist in the history of modern Japan, Andrew Gordon is the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1981 in History and East Asian Languages after completing a B.A. from Harvard in 1975.
