Although Mitsukoshi, Japan’s preeminent department store, did its best to rework luxury and play for the total war state through such efforts as a fashion spread on Vichy French style, the state’s demands stripped the retailer bare by 1945. Yet opposing “luxury” and “war” gives Mitsukoshi and unwarranted alibi: collaboration with imperialism had been hither to profitable. Mitsukoshi at war exposes the tangled nature of alliance and opposition between civilian and state institutions, as negotiated in the midst of crisis.

Noriko Aso is Associate Professor of History, and serves as the History Department’s Undergraduate Program Director.
 

This talk is presented by Stevenson College as a Distinguished Faculty Lecture. Co-sponsored by East Asian Studies Program, the History Department, and the Institute for Humanities Research.