Japanese Ceramics and the Complexities of Consumption in 'this Knife-Fork Land'

Japanese Gulch Village was home to a community of Japanese millworkers and their families between 1903 and 1930. During this time, village residents pursued a wide range of options for acquiring goods. This article uses a consumption framework and archaeological Japanese ceramics to explore the ways that village residents negotiated among purchasing options to increase communal wellbeing and express individual agency. As a case study, Japanese Gulch Village highlights the complexities of consumption in transpacific contexts and the importance of drawing connections between the Japanese ceramics industry and its Japanese diaspora customers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.