Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan

List of Illustrations

vii Illustrations Table Household machine sales by Singer and domestic manufacturers in Japan and Korea, 1933–40 / 107 Figures 1. Members of the 1860 Japanese mission to the United States examining a sewing machine / 15 2. Western seamstress in Yokohama, circa 1860 / 16 3. Attendants of the Meiji empress at a lakeside sewing party / 22 4. Mito store of the Singer Sewing Machine Company in 1922 / 33 5. Singer Sewing Academy ad from 1906 addressed to “Women Seeking the Road to Self-Reliance” / 43 6. Singer sales in northeast Asia, 1903–41 / 51 7. Ratio of Singer expenses to sales revenue in Japan, 1905–56 / 52 8. Singer machine-sewn kimono displayed in the 1922 industrial exhibition / 55 9. Singer sewing machine ad from 1910 for “dual use” twentiethcentury machine / 59 10. Singer sales leaflet from 1912 promoting the installment plan of ten sen per day / 60 11. Singer sales brochure, circa 1922, panel depicting a schoolgirl’s uniform / 61 12. Singer sales brochure, circa 1922, panel depicting a Japanese family sewing in a traditional Japanese room / 63 13. “The first lesson”: Singer postcard, 1913, depicting an American family sewing lesson / 64 14. May 1909 women’s magazine cover showing women reading a magazine together / 66 15. Early model Nippon Sewing Machine of Brothers Sewing Machine Company (circa 1933) / 109 16. Singer family-type sewing machine, sold widely in Japan in the late 1920s and early 1930s / 110 17. “Half the price of the foreign good”: newspaper ad for Pine Sewing Machine’s Janome model, 1934 / 111 18. Mochizuki Sewing Machine store in Mito, 1935 / 114 19. Kon WajirO’s graph titled “The Percentage Wearing Western Dress,” June 1937 / 122 20. “Shop ’til you drop”: newspaper ad for Pine-Janome sewing machine, 1936 / 127 21. “Pedal and multiply”: newspaper ad for Pine-Janome sewing machine, 1938 / 128 22. “The pleasures of sewing”: sewing school advertisement, 1933 / 129 23. “Our daughter-in-law must be a working woman”: sewing school advertisement, 1934 / 130 24. “How is this ‘style’?” Photo from a December 1941 newspaper story on standard dress for women / 145 25. May 1942 newspaper story on how to sew a modified standard dress outfit / 146 26. Graph showing the “ownership status of high-class cultural household goods,” 1958 / 155 27. Evening street sale of Janome sewing machines, 1969 / 171 28. Three sewing machine advertisements in Nihon mishin taimusu, early 1950s / 173 29. January 1960 cover illustration of Janome Sewing Machine in-house magazine / 174 30. “The world’s most beautiful woman”: Kojima Akiko and her Janome sewing machine, 1960 / 175 viii | Illustrations 31. “Installment Serenade”: drawing by Nasu RyOsuke for a 1959 newspaper story on installment sales / 183 32. “Moonlit Future”: romantic portrait of the postwar American dream from the cover of an August 1959 issue of the Saturday Evening Post / 184 33. Rush hour of students heading for their classes at the Doreme sewing school, 1958 / 198 34. Classroom scene at Doreme sewing school, 1958 / 199 35. “This Month’s Western Sewing” column in Yomiuri shinbun, February 27, 1960 / 212 Illustrations | ix ...