Housework and the Consumption History in pre-war Japan

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the practice of housework in modern Japan from the point of view of the consumption history. Gary Becker’s seminal argument provides us with the basic framework for considering the relationship between consuming “goods” and “housework” in the households, which combine time and market goods to produce more basic commodities that directly enter their utility functions. Based on this framework, this paper tries to explore how housework related to the consuming activities in modern Japan, by observing the practice of housework in the farming households as well as investigating the role of domestic servants in non-farming households in interwar period. (改行) We raise two points as the concluding remarks of this paper. First is the complementary nature of the housework to the consumption of goods in Japan’s households. The positive correlation between household expenses and housework hours, explored by a quantitative analysis using the data from economic survey of farming households, suggests this, and this finding might propose the inconsistent image of housework to that of Jan de Vries’s, which formulated the changing pattern of consumption in Europe, as he assumes the goods-intensive nature of the consumption in expense of the housework (substitutive nature of the housework to the consumption of goods) during the industrializing period in the West. This discrepancy might suggest a possible hypothesis that Japan’s pattern can be formulated as labour-intensive way of growing consumption, though it requires further comparative studies on the role of housework for material lives. Secondly, we noticed the supply side of the housework by measuring the contribution of family members as well as domestic servants. The plurality of the family members engaged in housework implies the nature of the Japan’s households remote from the breadwinner household model. It also suggests the link between housework and family system, or more interestingly, the relation between family system and consumption pattern.Revised in June 2011; subsequently published as "The Role of Housework in Everyday Life: Another Aspect of Consumption in Modern Japan", Francks, Penelope and Janet Hunter eds. The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850—2000, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp.27-55.本文フィルはリンク先を参照のこ