Japan, 1972: Consumer Nation

HYBRID EVENT: Robert A. Jones ‘59 Conference Room and Zoom
The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs program on Global and International History presents “Japan, 1972: Consumer Nation” by Yoshikuni Igarashi.
The youth rebellion of 1968-1969 has been a favored subject of Japan’s culture industry. Many accounts cast a nostalgic glance back on the period, celebrating the youth’s strong sense of political commitment. Some cultural critics have striven to produce more balanced appraisals of the period within the framework of global 1968. An exclusive focus on the incendiary oppositional politics of the period, however, has obscured the more mundane realities of everyday life. Bracketing the dramatic and glorified images of Japan’s 1968 political moment, Igarashi instead calls attention to the prosaic, yet profound, changes in Japanese society that occurred through the rise of mass consumerism in this period. He posits 1972 as a more consequential moment since it is when consumerism became the nation’s most revolutionary agent of change.<!—break—>

Yoshikuni Igarashi is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on Japanese cultural history during the interwar and post-WWII periods.

HYBRID EVENT: Robert A. Jones ‘59 Conference Room and Zoom
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