When People Identify Themselves as “Consumers”: The Position of the Consumer Cooperative Movement in Modern Japan

Abstract

This paper clarifies the process of transition in the concept of ‘consumer’ in Japan by analyzing the practice of a consumer cooperative movement before WWII. In social science, this concept has frequently been used as an analytical category. However, why was this concept, originally a term representing a recipient of goods, used as a category that people identified with.

In this paper, we analyze this transition by focusing on the socio-economic discourse in Japan. This concept was used not only as a trading entity but also as an actor of social change in the consumer cooperative movement of the 1920s. Moreover, faced with the problem of a lack of commodities in WWII, activists in the women’s movement identified themselves as “Consumers” serving the nation.