Book Review: Eiko Maruko Siniawer. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018)

Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, by Eiko Maruko Siniawer. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018, 414 pp., $49.95 (ISBN 9781501725845)

Eiko Maruko Siniawer’s study of waste in postwar Japan is history writing at its very best: expansive in scope, richly textured, compellingly narrated, and convincingly argued. As Siniawer explains, the ‘history of waste is at its heart a history of how people lived—how they made sense of, gave meaning to, and found value in the acts of the everyday in postwar Japan’ (3). While the book provides a marvellously rich narrative of how the Japanese have attempted to deal with various forms of physical waste, the author’s primary interest is in the idea of waste and what the changes and continuities in this idea tell us about Japan since 1945. The meanings of waste, Siniawer notes, were ‘reconfigured’ and ‘rearticulated’ throughout the period as people searched for meaning and value in their lives and, moreover, as Japan assumed a position among the ‘wealthy and consumptive countries of the world’ (296). So-called ‘waste consciousness’ came in many forms, ranging from a ‘civilising and modernising imperative’ to a ‘moral good’, a ‘path to self-satisfaction’, an ‘environmental commitment’, and an ‘expression of identity’ (296). Furthermore, the idea of waste did not remain stable and consistent over time, as individuals often espoused certain commitments—for example, concern for the environment—while remaining firmly attached to a comfortable lifestyle based on mass consumption and the associated mass production of waste. For all of these reasons, argues Siniawer, the study of waste provides a unique insight into the ‘enduring search for what might be called well-being, a good life, or a life well lived’ (298).