The Troubled ‘Twenties

Society and Culture

Landlords and Tenants

•Upper class lives

Landlords and Tenants

Landlords and Tenants•Impoverished tenants

Urban poor

Urban poor

Working class protest

Middle classes as buffer?•Modernizingowner-cultivatorsin countryside

The “old” middle classes Wholesalers and retailers,41% of employed in Tokyo,280,000/700,000

New middle class: at work •New “salaried” middle class,and new lifeways

Middle class women at work

New middle class: at play

New Middle Class:

At School?

New middle class: at the department store

•New “salaried” middle class, and new lifeways

MitsukoshiDept StoreDelivery service

Selling to the middle class

• Modern as “rational” and “frugal”; as investment in future

If you buy a Singer sewing machine, you can amortize it in just a few months

Selling to the middle class

• Modern as independent and liberated:

“the modern woman can stand

proudly on her own, if she has to”

Selling to the middle class

•New “salaried” middle class,and new lifeways

The “modern girl”

Albert Rabenbauer, Die Reklame (1929):Cover

Jupp Wiertz, Vogue, for F. Wolff & Sohn, Germany (1929)

Anxiety over the “modern girl” at play

Anxiety over the modern girl at work

•In factories: new militancy

Anxiety over the modern girl at work

•In factories: new militancy

Conclusions

•Persistent divisions: landlord-tenant, bosses and workers•An emerging middle, as stabilizer?•Excitement and anxiety

•Delight of the new, the Western, fashion and freedom for women•Anxiety at these same trends; a heightened fear of social disorder and cultural change