This panel takes a fresh look at the middle-class culture that was born during the boom years of the First World War. It builds on the pioneering archival work of Minami Hiroshi and his Shakai Shinri Kenkyûjo, and it engages the scholarship of Ishikawa Hiroyoshi, Yoshimi Shunya, Kashiwagi Hiroshi, Sheldon Garon, Miriam Silverberg, and a host of others. What these scholars hold in common is an abiding interest in the changing fabric of life in modern Japan. Between them, they have helped us to understand the mechanisms by which middle-class culture developed.

While we certainly hope to add more color to this emerging portrait of middle-class culture in the interwar era, we propose as well to offer much-needed analytical perspective on the "lifestyle" that this portrait depicts. Regine Mathias asks whether the sarariiman actually aspired to the American-inspired ideal of middle-class life that the state promoted; Kazuki Sato investigates the work of a new type of social critic, the hyoronka, who strove to put his finger on the pulse of everyday life; Jeffrey Hanes asks whether Osaka was really "the America of Japan"; and Barbara Sato explores the desires and anxieties of middle-class women through the lens of the mass magazines they read.

What these papers illustrate, above all, is that middle-class culture in the interwar period was anything but monolithic. Given that the myth of a monolithic "middle-class Japan" remains alive and well today—and that this myth continues to be projected into the past—we could do no better than to betray it as the invented tradition that it is.

Regine Mathias, Ruhr Universität, Bochum

Coming up with a definition of the middle class has always been difficult because it comprises a large range of occupations and incomes. This is especially true of societies in which a new middle class is in its formative period. Such was the case for Japanese society in the late Meiji and Taisho periods.

Recent studies have shown that Japanese social reformers were influenced by the Anglo-American model of middle class families and households long before the new middle class took shape. It can also be shown that public programs such as the Life Reform Movement (Seikatsu Kaizen Undô) in the 1920s, as well as individual attempts to define normative living standards, were commonly based on Anglo-American models.

Yet there is a large gap between these concepts and normative standards and actual living conditions, as expressed in statistical surveys of the Japanese middle class. This raises critical questions: (1) How closely did concepts and ideals about the middle class reflect the realities of middle class life? (2) When, where, and how were these Anglo-American concepts and ideals of middle-class life assimilated the daily lives and attitudes of Japanese such that they resulted in the formation of a new middle class?

Kazuki Sato, Nisho Gakusha University

This paper examines the characteristic features of a new type of intellectual, the hyôronka, one of the main articulators of 20th-century middle-class urban culture in Japan. Through their interpretations of social phenomena, such as the "modern girl" (moga), readers of popular books and magazines became convinced that a dramatic social change was in the making. Unlike the enlightenment discourse of the former generation of intellectuals, and the fantasies related to urban space written by popular novelists, the social critics’ descriptions of everyday life touched a yet to be explored aspect of reality.

The emergence of these critics represented a repositioning of intellectuals in a mass-oriented society. Many, like Nii Itaru and Murobuse Koshin, were formerly associated with newspapers. But the commercialization of the press deprived them of a free milieu in which to work, and they assumed the sobriquet of "independent writer" or "social critic." Not concerned to alter organized social systems—be it government, education, or the family structure—they preferred cafes and dimly-lit movie theaters. There, they found a personal refuge that coincided with the freedom that they perceived on the street, rather than in the home or the workplace. By making sense out of the so-called superficial changes identified with fashion, tone of voice, or even ways of walking, social critics attempted to find meaning in everyday life, their mirror for viewing social change in its broadest context.

Barbara Hamill Sato, Seikei University

Among the changes affecting Japanese women in the 1920s, those governing the lives of urban, middle-class women, were among the most dramatic. Negotiating the transformation these women underwent was more than a superficial, temporary process. Yet, it has remained largely unexplored in studies of modern Japan. The dismissal of this shift—whether in the development of an urban culture reflected in the lifestyle of the expanding middle class, the growth of the media, or spread of higher education—may be attributed to its association with a middle-class identity. Particularly germane here is the issue of middle-class women’s desires and anxieties as represented in women’s mass magazines.

The interaction between changing gender definitions and the hopes and dreams women’s mass magazines fostered in the construction of new middle-class identities became conspicuous in the twenties. For some middle-class women, economic stability furthered a conservatism and support for a way of life however hostile it was to personal needs. For others, the desires and anxieties they articulated through the medium of women’s mass magazines expressed a fervor to address problems like love and marriage, mothers-in-law and family relations, or the justification for working outside the home. Such problems appeared to overshadow even the formation of the nation. Encompassing this conscious, or unconscious opening up of possibilities, is the question of autonomy, an essential factor to consider in situating middle-class women during the inter-war period.

Jeffrey E. Hanes, University of Oregon

In the course of the Meiji and Taisho periods, the city once known as the Capital of Water (Mizu no Miyako) reportedly transformed itself into the Capital of Money (Kane no Miyako). By the end of the First World War, Osaka’s booming industrial economy and bustling international port had spawned a middle class that reputedly dictated urban fashion throughout Japan. Its dance halls, cafes, shopping arcades, amusement parks, residential developments, and department stores were on the cutting edge of cosmopolitan urban culture, and its moga and mobo were widely regarded as trend-setting "hipsters" (sentanjin). As perceived by the social critic Ôya Sôichi, Osaka was the "America of Japan"—a materialistic morass of middle-class acquisitiveness.

This paper will examine Osaka’s interwar reputation as a city where life revolved around money and materialism. It will ask several questions, including the following: What was the source and substance of such stereotypes of Osaka? How much of the city’s reputation for materialism was invented by Tokyoites with their condescending "gaze"? What part of Osaka’s reputation was earned? And what was urban life in Osaka really like?