rationalization and nostalgia: cultural dynamics of new middle‐class Japan

In the postwar decades, a cultural construction of Japan as a “New Middle Class” society has gained a broad orienting force in the society. New typifications of work, family, and society have provided frames of reference for the redefinition and reorganization of everyday routines. This paper illustrates how the people of one region have come to terms with such typifications in the midst of state programs for the rationalization of its agriculture and national media efforts to sentimentalize its regional culture. Rationalization and nostalgia are shown to reveal fundamental ambivalences in and about the lifeways of contemporary japan.