Toward Contemporary Co-operative Studies: Perspectives from Japan’s Consumer Co-ops

Abstract

Toward Contemporary Co-operative Studies: Perspectives from Japan's Consumer Co-ops. Edited by The Consumer Co-operative Institute of Japan. Tokyo, Japan: Consumer Co-operative Institute of Japan (CCIJ), 2009. 247 pp. ISBN: 9784915307003The good news is that a patient reader will come away from this collection of research papers and essays with plenty of insight into the origins and evolution of Japan's consumer co-operatives. Many Western co-operators know that a huge number (one third) of Japanese households belong to co-ops, and that many have a track record of commercial success that is considered enviable in other countries. However, few Canadians will have "drilled down" enough to understand the challenges and opportunities that Japan's co-operative sector has dealt with. Here is a book that offers a great overview of everything from the history of Japanese cooperative legislation to the future of the Social Economy and is available to English readers for the first time in one collection.The reader must be patient because there is a certain amount of duplication and repetition in this collection, and also because the text contains numerous, minor grammatical errors that make for slower than usual reading. The collection would have benefited from a final review by an attentive and scrupulous English language proofreader in order to ensure ease of flow. Be that as it may, by the end of the book the repetition ensures that the reader will have learned a great deal about the fundamentals of consumer co-ops in Japan, and probably more than they need to about the contaminated dumpling scandal!Joking aside, for this reader, the repetition was not altogether unwelcome as it helped me to better understand what the flashpoints and game-changing moments have been for Japan's co-operators in the post-war era. Even though six of the eleven chapters are written by a single author, Akira Kurimoto (Chief Researcher at the Consumer Co-operative Institute of Japan or CCIJ), there is sufficient variety among the remaining authors to provide the reader with a range of perspectives. I was particularly happy to encounter Mari Osawa's genderbased analysis towards the end of the book, which proved key in helping to grasp some of the changes that have swept through Japanese society over the past decades.Appreciating the role of women as the foundation of everything from Han groups to Home Delivery is another reason to read this book. When describing Japan's post-war shifttoward urban and suburban living, Otohiko Hasumi writes in the Introduction, "the most typical pattern of lifestyle ... in which husbands worked long hours for their companies (the Japanese 'salary man') and wives ... took charge of all household related activities" (p. x). Professor Hasumi goes on to describe such housewives as forming "the backbone of co-op's Joint Buying food distribution system" (p. …