{"product_id":"waste-consuming-postwar-japan-9781501725845","title":"Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWaste\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e, Eiko Maruko Siniawer innovatively explores the many ways in which the Japanese have thought about waste--in terms of time, stuff, money, possessions, and resources--from the immediate aftermath of World War II to the present.\u003c\/b\u003e She shows how questions about waste were deeply embedded in the decisions of everyday life, reflecting the priorities and aspirations of the historical moment, and revealing people's ever-changing concerns and hopes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOver the course of the long postwar, Japanese society understood waste variously as backward and retrogressive, an impediment to progress, a pervasive outgrowth of mass consumption, incontrovertible proof of societal excess, the embodiment of resources squandered, and a hazard to the environment. Siniawer also shows how an encouragement of waste consciousness served as a civilizing and modernizing imperative, a moral good, an instrument for advancement, a path to self-satisfaction, an environmental commitment, an expression of identity, and more. From the late 1950s onward, a defining element of Japan's postwar experience emerged: the tension between the desire for the privileges of middle-class lifestyles made possible by affluence and dissatisfaction with the logics, costs, and consequences of that very prosperity. This tension complicated the persistent search for what might be called well-being, a good life, or a life well lived. \u003ci\u003eWaste\u003c\/i\u003e is an elegant history of how people lived--how they made sense of, gave meaning to, and found value in the acts of the everyday.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eEiko Maruko Siniawer is Class of 1955 Memorial Professor of History at Williams College. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eRuffians, Yakuza, Nationalists.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50524640739602,"sku":"9781501725845","price":159.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_383a8c12-11ee-4abd-862c-561358fd0b38.jpg?v=1737230353","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/waste-consuming-postwar-japan-9781501725845","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}