Description

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This fascinating book—part ethnography, part memoir—traces Japan’s vibrant café society over one hundred and thirty years. Merry White traces Japan’s coffee craze from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, to the present day, as uniquely Japanese ways with coffee surface in Europe and America. White’s book takes up themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism. She shows how coffee and coffee spaces have been central to the formation of Japanese notions about the uses of public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure. White describes how the café in Japan, from its start in 1888, has been a place to encounter new ideas and experiments in thought, behavior, sexuality , dress, and taste. It is where a person can be socially, artistically, or philosophically engaged or politically vocal. It is also, importantly, an urban oasis, where one can be private in public.

About the Author

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Merry White is Professor of Anthropology at Boston University and is the author of many books, including Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval (UC Press) and The Japanese Overseas.

Praise For…

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“Required reading for coffee’s true believers and industry insiders.”
— Oliver Strand,

“You'll find your eyes opened beyond the new and storied cafes you've heard of and into regional corners and paradoxical tastes.”
— Serious Eats

“A fascinating 130-year illumination of Japan's deeply rooted sipping culture.”
— LA Weekly

“This excellent book combines academic rigour with lively descriptions and compelling prose.”
— Times Higher Education

“Provides an engaging and often personal account of Japanese coffeehouses. . . . Highly recommended.”
— CHOICE

“Merry White has whiled away many hours in cafés in Japan in her professional role as an anthropologist, and wishes to communicate the diversity and intimacy one can experience in them.”
— Times Literary Supplement

"The rich descriptions of these journeys are indeed one of the merits of the book."
— Journal of Japanese Studies

“Coffee Life in Japan provides a novel and significant study on contemporary Japanese life through its examination of coffee and café culture.”
— Journal of American-East Asian Relations