Nozomi Naoi, "The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life" (MIT Press, 2026)

New Books in Sociology · Aug 4, 2026 · 39m

The Land of Happiness: How the Japanese Department Store Visualized Modern Life (MIT Press, 2026) explores the far-reaching influence of the Japanese department store on modern life and our imaginations. In this gorgeously illustrated volume, Dr. Nozomi Naoi explains how Japanese department stores modeled “the new modern Japanese life and identity” through print media and design, physical and imagined space, and the new experiences that these spaces offered. The stores created the notion of a modern subject enjoying a “land of happiness”—and this, in turn, shaped the wider sociological…