For My Future Encounter with Konbini
The Annotated Bibliography for My Future Japanese Convenience Store Research
The Social, Cultural, and Historical Development and Influence of Japanese Konbini (Convenience Store)
A little box of low-fat milk and a double-chicken mayo sandwich. They were processed intrinsically but tasted fresh after directly picked up from the refrigerator.
That was my first encounter with a so-called convenience store two years ago in Shanghai. Since then, I have kept visiting convenience stores like FamilyMart, Lawson, and Xishiduo in small developing cities and other less cosmopolitan regions in China. The store chains are radically growing and dominating Chinese retail business. China is experiencing a convenience store fever. People are fascinated by it.
In Japanese, “convenience store” is コンビニエンスストア or コンビニ (konbini). Japan fell into the konbini craze earlier than most Asian countries when the first FamilyMart opened in Tokyo in 1969. Gone through the peak time of westernization and economic bubble in the mid-late nineteenth century, konbini evolved from an insignificant existence to a ubiquitous business model that predominates modern Japanese lifestyle. During the short fifty years, konbini reflect multiple social, cultural, and personal demands and policies of their times within complex interconnections among customers, employees, and companies. In a domestic sphere, konbini prosper with binary features— de-regionalization and localization, de-differentiation and standardization, humanization and mechanization. These social complexities are also conceptually expressed in diverse forms of art— fictional and non-fictional narratives, website visualizations, songs, etc. A range of emotions arises from the artworks — excitement, utilitarian-ness, solidarity, resignation, wistfulness — but how do people’s inner feelings intertwine and reflect some larger issues of the konbini trend?
Along with my primitive organization of academic sources and literature, more interesting topics await to be recognized and explored interdisciplinarily. For example. Lawson and 7-Eleven are American in origin, but how do they thrive in Japan and finally become its cultural symbol? How does Japanese’s adoption of American chain stores embody the nation’s underlying malleability of assimilating foreign culture? Do konbini resonate with other historical occurrences in Japan such as department stores, yoshoku, coffee, and ramen? If konbini can be studied as a result of westernization, then how comparable is the reversed process of something Japanese immigrating and integrated into other cultures — say, the boom of California rolls in San Fransisco?
I am reluctant to call my konbini project formal research. It is simply a personal interest in knowing how some people’s lives diverge and present themselves in the age of globalization. The following annotations are very konbini-oriented and can easily ignore other aspects of the sources, which you can explore later as a challenge to my narrow interpretation of literature. The konbini project, the idea of konbini, will accompany me for a long time. In January next year, I will visit Japan and conduct an ethnographic observation of konbini. For now, let us hop on the trip of konbini and read and think a little more than we usually did.
Works Cited
C. Bestor, Theodore. “Kaiten-zushi and Konbini: Japanese Food Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System, edited by Wilk, Richard R. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006, pp. 115–130.
In this chapter, Theodore schematically investigates social and economic commonalities between two closely linked business models — kaiten-zushi (rotary sushi) and konbini — in the industrial Japanese society. The author traces the origin of sushi as street food in the 1930s and chronologically reasons the impact of cheap imported seafood towards the mass-production and consumption of packaged sushi since the 1980s. He also uses statistics to illustrate the growth of convenience stores. The data also shows the growing trend of Japanese young generations’ socially seclusive and affectless lifestyles. Both examples of franchising are influenced by technological innovation, new retail distribution method, foreign imports, and de-skilled labor force.
While Theodore efficiently summarizes the brief histories of similar business institutions, he shallowly touches upon the historical background of the 1980’s “bubble economy.” How does the 1980s directly stimulate the changes in Japan’s foreign and domestic policies of the retail business? Additionally, when he compares rotary sushi to expensive sushi, he could also have introduced the cultural background of Japanese traditional sushi aesthetics. What culinary aspects of packaged sushi differ from sushi made by artisan chiefs? How do their flavor, appearance, and price define classes of consumers?
This chapter addresses the resemblances between konbini and other business models. The features of konbini stand out in comparison to other business forms. This passage also inspires me to reflect more on the social problems of the young generation’s mechanic lifestyle and their lowered standards of meal choices.
Whitelaw, Gavin Hamilton. “Rice Ball Rivalries: Japanese Convenience Stores and the Appetite of Late Capitalism.” Fast Food/Slow Food: The Cultural Economy of the Global Food System, edited by Wilk, Richard R. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006, pp. 131–143.
This chapter begins with an introduction of typical Japanese meal onigiri (rice ball). The food evolves from a war food in Heian Period, then a school lunch during Meiji Restoration, to a symbolic home food conventionally sold in convenience stores. The author uses the rice-ball-rivalries between popular convenience stores 7-Eleven and Lawson to demonstrate their successful food marketing and production strategies. Gavin also shortly mentions food issues such as the uses of food additives and preservatives and food waste.
The author focuses only on the sale of rice balls under the konbini cultural structure, offering a usually unseen perspective of how konbini conducts marketing and food production and distribution. Fine descriptions like 7-eleven inventing a new packaging that separates the rice from the seaweed to prevent the blending of different flavors encourage me to think more about how Japanese konbini exceed others in the world due to their attention to details. Even though the author does not fully examine the food waste issue, he uncovers the dark sides of konbini and intrigues me into exploring potential improvements on food circulation and reuse.
Whitelaw, Gavin Hamilton. “Counter Intelligence: The Contingencies of Clerkship at the Epicentre of Convenience Culture.” Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organisations, edited by Christina Garsten and Anette Nyqvist, Pluto Press, London, 2013, pp. 29–42. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183gzs7.6. Accessed 13 May 2019.
Gavin’s narrative of his clerkship at Daily Yamazaki in peripheral Tokyo is more readable than most formal studies on Japanese retail business. His story vividly provides a local and intimate perspective of the efficiency, standardization, and calculability of a convenience store. More importantly, we can see stories behind the scene such as the store owner’s realistic worries on sales and regional competitions, the data collecting system installed in the cashier machine, and the unsold food distributed to clerks.
This article directly impacts my future research visits to convenience stores in Japan by propelling me to carefully observe the interactions among customers, clerks, and owners. Therefore, through physical visits, I am able to discover more useful details that reflect the humane side of konbini operation.
Waldman, Katy. “Sayaka Murata’s Eerie ‘Convenience Store Woman’ Is a Love Story Between a Misfit and a Store.” Page Turner, The New Yorker, 21 June 2018, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sayaka-murata-eerie-convenience-store-woman-is-a-love-story-between-a-misfit-and-a-store. Accessed 15 May 2019.
The book review of Mr. Murata’s novel Convenience Store Woman does a social-psychological analysis of between the protagonist Keiko and the counterpart character Shiraha. Katy objectively evaluates the ambiguity of Keiko’s sexless, loveless, and robotic life as both an embodiment of Japanese middle-class women’s social pressure and a claim of their bold independence in the patriarchal society.
Nevertheless, the contributor could have incorporated more social backgrounds like convenience stores’ mistreatments of workers and women’s career restrictions. How do these social inequalities shape a female clerk’s repressed personality? Moreover, beyond the clerk who greets and serves people monotonously, customers also become adapted to the banality of convenience store and practice automatic shopping habits. How do purposeless (in terms of changing shopping habits) customers efficiently interact with emotionless clerks? What kind of common languages do they employ in such a behaviorally repressed environment? Does language become a form of acknowledged negotiation and reservation between mechanic clerks and customers?
Regarding my research, this review reveals the dark side of the Japanese convenience store culture. Convenience stores exist as a hyper-functional economic and social utopia that imposes strict rules and established routines on people. The review critically perceives konbini as an ambivalent existence that brings both positive and negative impacts on individuals. The article connects the spread of konbini to not only what Japanese society needs but what it lacks emotionally, historically, and culturally. Comparatively speaking, the woman’s clerkship experience in the novel also contrasts with Gavin’s volunteer internship mentioned above. The woman becomes a socially secluded and self-functional figure, but Gavin remains as an open-minded worker as well as a fulfilled researcher. I question whether gender determines how they are treated by customers and store owners? Also, Gavin observes konbini as a curious foreigner, but Keiko is a Japanese woman striving for a living. Their distinct personal backgrounds also mirror the gap between a touristic overview and the local reality.
Iyer, Pico. “Eat, Memory: Our Lady of Lawson.” Archives 2005, New York Times, 3 April 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/eat-memory-our-lady-of-lawson.html. Accessed 15 May 2019.
Pico expresses her gratitude towards Japanese convenience stores through her narrative on her satisfying shopping experiences at konbini. From a foreign customer’s perspective, she lists her favorite products from chocolates to medicine. She appreciates the essence of Japanese culture embedded through a convenience store’s cleanness, efficiency, and its clerk’s politeness and appearance.
However, I seriously doubt the objectivity of her opinion. Is the convenience store Lawson really as idealized as she describes? Based on the accounts from Gavin and Keiko’s experiences as clerks, Pico’s absolutely positive attitude towards the stores is singular. Her arbitrary perception of convenience stores also warns me against using a touristic outsider’s view when I conduct my on-site research in Japan.
Marshall, David. “Convenience Stores and Discretionary Food Consumption Among Young Tokyo Consumers.” International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 44(10), 1013–1029, 2016, www.emeraldinsight.com/0959-0552.htm. Accessed 14 May 2019.
David considers the role of convenience stores in young people’s discretionary food consumption. His research paper is clearly divided into the purpose, qualitative research logistics, and findings of the business research. He explicates how young people can have the freedom to make independent shopping decisions in such an immediate, ubiquitous, and accessible shopping environment. The research data also shows people’s shopping patterns and the proportions of different ages and genders of consumer groups. It provides solid scientific support for my partial research on Japanese’s shopping habits at convenience stores.
One of the points that the researcher fails to explain clearly is the comparison drawn at the end of the paper between the shopping experience at a convenience store and that at a supermarket. How do they essentially differ from each other based on space, atmosphere, and products? What economic or cultural aspects of Japanese society foster the bloom of small retail stores rather than big supermarkets? It is also interesting to juxtapose dominant supermarkets like Walmart and Whole Foods Market in the U.S. to localized retail stores in most Asian countries and interrogate the reasons behind their regional popularities.
Odagiri, Tokumi, and Paul Riethmuller. “Japan’s Large Scale Retail Store Law: a cause of concern for food exporters?” Agricultural Economics, vol. 22, Issue 1 Jan. 2000, pp. 55–65, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1574–0862.2000.tb00005.x. Accessed 16 May 2019.
This economy journal addresses the cause of reforms on the Large Scale Retail Store Law and their influence on Japanese food distribution and consumption. The authors hold positive attitudes towards the reforms which encourage the openings of large stores and improve sales in Japan. While bearing potential risks of lowering imported products, the new domestic food distribution policy still fits in the social environment and economic demand.
Data about the large-scale policy removal in the late 1990s can be used as supportive evidence for my research on the growth of convenience stores and other small retail business. The decreases in the retail business’s cost and scale promote people’s collaborative business incentives in communities. Large companies also become less restrained to expand their local business.
Grinshpun, Helena. “The City and the Chain: Conceptualizing Globalization and Consumption in Japan.” Japan Review, no. 24, 2012, pp. 169–195. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41592693. Accessed 13 May 2019.
Helena comprehends the globalization process in Japan by analyzing the proliferation of Starbucks in urban environments. Many innovative insights of urbanization, westernization, and domestication are presented through interesting analogies. The author describes cities not as a hub “centrality” but a node of “connectivity.” She also parallelizes Starbucks as a cultural coffee Disneyland that employs “themed environment, merchandising, emotional labor, and de-differentiation of consumption” (Grinshpun 173).
I can find parallels between the successes of konbini and Starbucks — their evoking marketing strategies, utilization of space, and the bonding between customers and employees. Nevertheless, Starbucks distinguishes itself by its prominent branding of cultural reference of coffee as a symbol of westernization. On the other hand, konbini specialize in fostering communal connections in a domestic sphere. The comparative research approach also propels me to extract commonalities and distinctions among different subjects.
The author’s top-down investigation of Starbucks is also worth noticing. She firstly lays the foundation for the Starbuck research by extracting characteristics of urban places. She constructs her arguments citing sociologists’ theories and integrates specific case studies to support her conclusion. Her research method also guides me to associate the study of konbini with ample theoretical texts and to visit local konbini if possible. I also appreciate that she mentions the duality of Starbucks which de-territorializes and localizes coffee. This ambivalence in a business model can also be seen in konbini’ contradictory standardization and concentration of commodities.
Moreover, as Starbucks thrives in Japan as an exotic product, the journal also invokes my interest in considering the opposite process of how Japanese food is introduced and integrated into western societies. For example, how do Japanese sushi evolve into California rolls in San Francisco and symbolize Japanese culture?
FamilyMart Co., Ltd. www.family.co.jp/goods.html. Accessed 12 May 2019.
The official website FamilyMart, the second most popular konbini in Japan, offers a spectrum of all the products and services they provide. This website contributes to my visual understanding of all the readings by showing abundant images of their food packaging through product marketing.
7-Eleven Inc. www.7-eleven.com/. Accessed 16 May 2019.
This is the official website of a Japanese-owned American international chain of convenience store called 7-Eleven. It is also one of the oldest and most popular konbini in Japan. This website is in English and presents all the products varying from food, commodities, to gift card services sold in America.
7-Eleven Inc. www.sej.co.jp/index.html. Accessed 16 May 2019.
This is the official website of 7-Eleven in Japan. It differs significantly from the American website in terms of the varieties and visualizations of food, commodities, and local services. One of the direct distinctions is that the website has a geographic demonstration where consumers can filter nearby stores by clicking on types of service they need. However, the American website does not offer this function at all. This difference also reflects that Japan has a more developed system of convenience store distribution and meets more personalized demands from consumers. Another distinction is that the Japanese website provides a price tag under each product image, but American website does not. It also shows the high standardization of Japanese retail culture and the inconsistency of price in its American business version.
きのこ帝国. “クロノスタシス.” はじめてのきのこ帝国 UK.PROJECT, 2018. Spotify, open.spotify.com/album/0LxNBg29aWO4fEezF54fYk.
This Japanese song is called “chronostasis” in English. It talks about the daily experience of buying cans of beer from konbini near midnight and wandering on the streets without the purpose of going home. The lyrics embody the inner thoughts of a person who actively asks questions to his/her company during the walk. The succinct language betrays one’s unresolved loneliness and the desire of being accompanied by someone. The song reveals a subtle but immersive sense of romance — solitarily walking on the street at night but remembering someone important — the intangibility of someone is transformed into an automatic and long-lasting action of memorizing. Convenience stores are not only physical places but also a mental concentration of their visitors’ stories, interactions, and memories.
