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Coffee Life in Japan (Volume 36) Paperback – May 1, 2012
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of California Press
- Publication dateMay 1, 2012
- Dimensions6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100520271157
- ISBN-13978-0520271159
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“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
From the Inside Flap
Merry White's book is vital reading for anyone interested in culture and coffee, which has a surprising and surprisingly long history in Japan. Tracing the evolving role of the country's cafes, and taking us on armchair visits to some of the best, White makes us want to board a plane immediately to sample a cup brewed with kodawari, a passion bordering on obsession. Devra First, The Boston Globe
"Coffee Life in Japan features highly engaging history and ethnographic detail on coffee culture in Japan. Many readers will delight in reading this work. White provides an affectionate, deeply felt, well reasoned book on coffee, cafes, and urban spaces in Japan." Christine Yano, author of Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways
"Combining unmistakable relish for the subject with decades of academic expertise, Merry White skillfully demonstrates that the café, not the teahouse, is a core space in urban Japanese life. Her portrait of their endurance, proliferation, and diversity aptly illustrates how coffee drinking establishments accommodate social and personal needs, catering to a range of tastes and functions. It is a lovely and important book not only about the history and meanings of Japan s liquid mojo, but also about the creation of new urban spaces for privacy and sociality." Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics
From the Back Cover
“Merry White's book is vital reading for anyone interested in culture and coffee, which has a surprising and surprisingly long history in Japan. Tracing the evolving role of the country's cafes, and taking us on armchair visits to some of the best, White makes us want to board a plane immediately to sample a cup brewed with ‘kodawari,’ a passion bordering on obsession. “ ―Devra First, The Boston Globe
"Coffee Life in Japan features highly engaging history and ethnographic detail on coffee culture in Japan. Many readers will delight in reading this work. White provides an affectionate, deeply felt, well reasoned book on coffee, cafes, and urban spaces in Japan."―Christine Yano, author of Airborne Dreams: "Nisei" Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways
"Combining unmistakable relish for the subject with decades of academic expertise, Merry White skillfully demonstrates that the café, not the teahouse, is a core space in urban Japanese life. Her portrait of their endurance, proliferation, and diversity aptly illustrates how coffee drinking establishments accommodate social and personal needs, catering to a range of tastes and functions. It is a lovely and important book not only about the history and meanings of Japan’s liquid mojo, but also about the creation of new urban spaces for privacy and sociality." ―Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : University of California Press; First Edition (May 1, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0520271157
- ISBN-13 : 978-0520271159
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #170,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in General Brazil Travel Guides
- #79 in Coffee & Tea (Books)
- #108 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Merry White (also known as Corky) was born in Washington D.C. and raised in Chicago and Minnesota. She received her degrees (A.B., A.M., and PhD) from Harvard University in Anthropology (East Asian), Comparative Literature (English, French and Italian), and Sociology (Japan). She was Director of the Project on Human Potential at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1980 - 1986, a multinational study of learning with case studies in Japan, India, The People's Republic of China, Egypt, West Africa and Mexico. She was also Director of International Education at the School of Education during this period, and from 1976 - 1987 was administrator of the East Asian Studies undergraduate program at Harvard College. In 1987 she began teaching at Boston University and received tenure in 1989.
Her publications include: Coffee Life in Japan, (University of California Press, 2012); Perfectly Japanese: Making Family in an Era of Upheaval (University of California Press, 2002); The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America (Free Press, 1993; Dobunshoin, 1993; University of California Press, 1994); Comparing Cultures (with Sylvan Barnet, Bedford Books, 1995); The Japanese Educational Challenge, (Free Press, 1986, Princeton University Press 1992, and Shueisha, 1992); The Japanese Overseas, (Free Press, 1988); Human Conditions (with Robert LeVine, Routledge, 1987) and Challenging Tradition: Women in Japan, (Japan Society, 1992). In addition she has published two cookbooks, Cooking for Crowds (Basic Books, 1973) and Noodles Galore (Basic Books 1976) and has written many articles on food and culture.
Merry White teaches courses on urban Japanese society, on food and culture, on women in Asia and on the anthropology of travel and tourism. In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. White is also consultant to educational and media projects related to Japan and to culinary anthropology. She has studied cooking in Japan and Italy, and was a professional caterer. She has also recently worked with the Discovery Channel to create a television series on Asian foodways, appearing in a one hour segment on Japanese cuisine which won two Asian Television awards. Her next project is a book on the world history of food, written with her son Ben Wurgaft, to be followed by a research project on the natures of food work. She also works with a project to sell Cambodian coffee in Japan, in order to support local development and elementary schools in north-eastern Cambodia. She has two children: Jennifer (White) Callaghan who is a lawyer in London, and Benjamin Wurgaft, an intellectual historian in Berkeley, California, and one grandchild, Meghan Callaghan. Merry White lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about half-way between them.
A recent interview:http://www.heartnstomach.com/post/19730573134/corky-white-on-second-winds-japan-and-the-beards#.T2t2GC0GN-k.email
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Cooked for him, I mean. She resorts to contorted sentences every couple of pages. This is an Anthro book, not 19th Century German Philosophy!!
I guess it was written for a couple of hundred American academics who would buy it because they knew of her, and a few Japanese
intellectuals with whom she had contact. But the latter would not be able to get through her verbal psycho-camouflage to understand
anything.
I was so happy to see the title, being a lover of Japanese Kissas, particularly the smell in the old ones in Kyoto, Osaka or especially Kobe,
(a town she missed all together). But I was disappointed with the book.
A couple of fundamental mistakes: the Starbucks type places are not being pushed back at all. They are in steady state. Full of young ladies
for whom it is perfectly normal to hang out in. White is very wrong in the book when she states many times how the coffee shop had a liberating
function in the early 1900's, and young women could freely go to a cafe. In the 1960's even, a "proper" young lady could not be seen in one of the
usual cafes, and only in a handful of prestigious ones in the bigger cosmopolitan cities, perhaps two or three in the Ginza or one in Sannomiya.
Until Starbucks came. I don't go to Starbucks and such, but it is worth chasing it around the world with an Anthropologist's camera...
Top reviews from other countries
In this book, however, the golden era of the Japanese coffee is not, nearly not at all elucidated. It was the largest boom in Japan occured during 1970's-early 80's. The number of "kissa-ten (cafe in Japan)" was increased more than 120,000 in 1985, and diminished gradually until the bubble burst in 1991 (independently-operated cafes are generally increased associated with hiring slump during economic slowdown and are decreased in good time in Japan). The competition among cafes increased the importance of the discrimination strategy, and it was the driving power for the development of "Jika-baisen-ten (roastery cafe in Japan)", the cafes specialized to coffee with unique roasting and brewing systems. The lack of the author's viewpoint on this period is critical, and rather strange. A strangeness is, e.g., that the author introduces Maruyama coffee as the "traditional" cafe in Japan. Maruyama coffee, however, was founded in 1991, the early period of the cafe'-boom after bubble burst, and is usually considered in Japan as the standard-bearer of the new-wave which import the SCAA-related coffee culture. Another strangeness is, e.g., that the author does not mention about Bach Kaffee, which is one of the top-leading of the roastery cafe in Japan founded 1968. Mamoru Taguchi, the founder of Bach Kaffee, is just an owner of a cafe in the downtown in Tokyo, but his theory and instruction for the coffee preparation and cafe management are so spread with his books that he is now (2012-13) the president of SCAJ, the specialty coffee association of Japan. The complete neglect about him is strange as much as if someone would rule out Alfred Peet from the history of coffee in US. I'm afraid the advisers in Japan, not the author herself, may be biased or may have conflict of interests. --Or maybe, simply, the author had captivated by the appearance of the cafes.
Despite the problems, this book is a very good start to understand the unique coffee culture and technology in Japan. This may also give some hints for business to the coffee persons in US, Europe, and so on. I want to see the sequel(s), if the author will publish.







