¹ Jones, Geoffrey G. and Kiron, David, “Singer Sewing Machine Company: 1851–1914,” Harvard Business School case N9–804–001 (Boston, 2003), 1.Google Scholar

² On Singer's early history, see: Carstensen, Fred V., American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1984), 17–19, 24–25Google Scholar; Godley, Andrew, “Selling the Sewing Machine Around the World: Singer's International Marketing Strategies, 1850–1920,” Enterprise and Society 7 (June 2006): 270–76, 302Google Scholar; Davies, Robert Bruce, Peacefully Working to Conquer the World: Singer Sewing Machines in Foreign Markets, 1852–1920 (New York, 1976), 161.Google Scholar

³ Godley, “Selling the Sewing Machine,” 268–69.

⁴ These phrases appear at the head of a Singer Japanese-language sales pamphlet, “Katei oyobi shokugyō yō shingaa mishin mokuroku” [Catalog of Singer Sewing Machines for Household and Industrial Use]. Held in collection of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, item # 93200196, undated.

⁵ Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004), 12–13.Google Scholar

⁶ Ibid., 1–2; Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996), 17, 32.Google Scholar

⁷ Kuwahara Tetsuya, “Shoki takokuseki kigyō no tainichi tōshi to minzoku kigyō” [Pioneering Multinationals' Investment in Japan and Native Firms], Kokumin keizai zasshi 185 (May 2002): 52.

⁸ Hata Toshiyuki, “Shingaa seizō kaisha ni kan sura hōkoku” [Report on Singer Manufacturing Company] (1903), 2, held in Tokyo Chamber of Commerce archives. Reprinted in Satoshi, Matsumura, Kaigai jitsugyō kenshūsei hōkoku, Nōshōmushō shōkōkyoku rinji hōkoku, vol. 10 (Tokyo, 2002), 326.Google Scholar

⁹ Godley, “Selling the Sewing Machine,” 282, draws on Friedman, Walter A., The Birth of the Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, Mass., 2004).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Godley, “Selling the Sewing Machine,” 291.

¹¹ Ibid., 296.

¹² Hata, “Shingaa seizō kaisha,” 3.

¹³ “Directory of Shops under Controlling Agency” [1904?]; and “Directory of Shops for the Sale of Singer Sewing Machines throughout the World, revised Jan. 1906,” both in the Singer Sewing Machine Company Archives held at the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

¹⁴ kyoku, Osaka tsūshō sangyō ed., Mishin kōgyō [The Sewing Machine Industry] (Osaka, 1951), 315.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Tsugio, Abe, ed., Mishin konjaku monogatari [Long-Ago Tales of the Sewing Machine] (Tokyo, 1960), 28.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Abe, Mishin konjaku monogatari, 29.

¹⁷ Ad headlined “Singer's Sewing Machines,” undated. The text notes that Singer quality “has just been confirmed” with a Gold Medal at the Great Exposition at the Palace of Industry, in France, placing it either shortly after the 1878 or the 1889 exposition. Smithsonian Institute Archives, Warshaw Collection, Sewing Machines, box 3, folder 1.

¹⁸ Abe, Mishin konjaku monogatari, 28.

¹⁹ “Mishin gyōkai to seerusuman no kimyō na kankei” [The Strange Relationship of Salesmen to the Sewing Machine Industry], Nihon shūhō (15 Apr. 1964): 38.

²⁰ Hata, “Shingaa seizō kaisha,” 5.

²¹ See Geppu kenkyū 1, no. 1 (15 Apr. 1957): 3; 1, no. 3 (15 June 1957): 3.

²² kaigishō, Tokyo shōkō, Geppu hanbai seido [The System of Installment Sales] (Tokyo, 1929), 212–13.Google Scholar

²³ Calder, Lendol, Financing the American Dream (Princeton, 1999), 56–57.Google Scholar

²⁴ On installment department-store rates, Sho, Kuribayashi, “Geppu no hanashi” [Story of Monthly Installments], Sarariiman 2 (Mar. 1929): 65–66.Google Scholar

²⁵ “Annual World Reports” held at Singer Sewing Machine Company archives, Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin.

²⁶ Singer sales leaflet, undated (approximately 1912), held in collection of Edo-Tokyo Museum.

²⁷ The monthly circulation of Fujokai [Women's World] had reached nearly 200,000 copies by the early 1920s. “A Ten Year History,” Fujokai 27 (Jan. 1923), offers circulation figures.

²⁸ Nobuko, Imura, “Kodomo no nichijō fuku wo zenbu yōfuku ni” [Make All Children's Daily Dress Western Dress], Fujokai 21 (Jan. 1920): 213–15.Google Scholar

²⁹ Singer sales leaflet, approximately 1922, held in collection of Edo-Tokyo Museum.

³⁰ On the importance of credit for Singer's success in the United States, and its pioneering role in spreading installment sales to ordinary families, see Calder, Financing the American Dream, 162–66; and Friedman, Birth of A Salesman, 94–97. For a nice presentation of a similar dual appeal to customers in France, see Coffin, Judith G., “Credit, Consumption, and Images of Women's Desires: Selling the Sewing Machine in Late Nineteenth Century France,” French Historical Studies 18 (Spring 1994): 749–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Carstensen, American Enterprise in Foreign Markets, 58.

³² In preparing Figure 1, I have excluded machines sold by Singer's Manufacturing Trade Division (MTD), about 10 percent of the total, which were purchased by garment factories and other industrial producers (shoes, Japanese tabi socks).

³³ Carstensen, American Enterprise in Foreign Markets, 62–64.

³⁴ Ibid., 64.

³⁵ Godley, “Selling the Sewing Machine,” 290.

³⁶ Andrew Godley, “Consumer Durables and Westernization in the Middle East: The Diffusion of Singer Sewing Machines in the Ottoman Region, 1880–1930,” paper presented at Eighth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence, Mar. 2007, 5–13. Comparative per capita income from Maddison, Angus, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Friedman, Birth of a Salesman.

³⁸ Ibid., 88.

³⁹ Ibid., 91.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 97.

⁴¹ Koyama Okazaemon, “Watakushi no itsuwarazaru kokuhaku” [My True Confession], in Gaimushō kiroku, “Honpō ni okeru rōdō sōgi kankei zakken: Shingaa kaisha kankei” [Documents Concerning Labor Disputes in Our Country: Singer Company], 449–56.

⁴² Satoshi, Shimozono, Dotō o koete: Yamamoto Taōsaku denki (1960), 52–53.Google Scholar This hagiographie biography may well exaggerate his ranking, but Yamamoto was without doubt a successful salesman.

⁴³ Matsuoka Komakichi, “Shingaa kaisha sōgi no keika to sono shinsō” [The Truth About the Singer Company Dispute], 15 Dec. 1932, in Gaimushō kiroku, 590.

⁴⁴ “Yōkyūsho” [Demands] Gaimushō kiroku, 430–37.

⁴⁵ For documentation of both these disputes, see Kyū kyōchōkai shiryō rōdō sōgi, vol. 9 (1925), held at the Ohara Institute for Social Research.

⁴⁶ Shingaa kaisha sōgi ni kan suru ken [Issues regarding the Singer Company Dispute], 18 Nov. 1932, Gaimushō kiroku, 322–23.

⁴⁷ “Statement” to “Mr. T. Taketomi, in charge of Foreign Trade, Foreign Office,” Gaimushō kiroku, 249 (original in English).

⁴⁸ “Vest yori no kanyūjō” [A letter from Vest], 11 Jan. 1933, Gaimushō kiroku, 875–76.

⁴⁹ Shintarō, Yoda, Gakuriteki shōryaku hō: hanbaiin to hanbaijustu (Tokyo, 1916).Google Scholar Taylor's Principles were introduced in the popular press in Japan almost immediately upon publication in 1911, and the book was published in a full translation in 1913. See Tsutsui, William, Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth Century Japan (Princeton, 1998), 18–19.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Yoda, Gakuriteki shōryaku hō, 5.

⁵¹ Chōji, Kuramoto, Atarashii gaikōjutsu [New Selling Tactics] (Tokyo, 1936), 14–15, 17.Google Scholar

⁵² Rokuro, Ishikawa, Shusse gaikōjutsu [Selling Tactics for Success] (Tokyo, 1925), 6–7.Google Scholar

⁵³ Masami, Shimizu, Hōmon hanbai chūmon o toru hiketsu [Secrets of Success in Door-to-Door Sales] (Tokyo, 1924), 1–6.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ On the disastrous policies of Japan's 1929 return to, and 1931 move off, the gold standard, which led to this depreciation in the yen, see Metzler, Mark, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, 2006), chs. 10–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ “Yōkyūsho,” Gaimushō kiroku, 429.

⁵⁶ Kyōchōkai, , ed., Saikin no shakai undō [Recent Social Movements] (Tokyo, 1927), 776.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Gordon, Andrew, “Business and the Corporate State: The Business Lobby and Bureaucrats on Labor, 1911–1941,” in Managing Industrial Enterprise, ed. Wray, William (Cambridge, Mass, 1989), 67–68.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ “Yōkyūsho,” Gaimushō kiroku, 429.

⁵⁹ “Kōmyō na jikyūsen” [A Strange War of Endurance], Yomiuri shinbun, 27 Oct. 1932, evening edition, 2.

⁶⁰ “Statement” submitted to “T. Taketomi, in charge of Foreign Trade, Foreign Office, Kasumigaseki, Tokyo,” 12 Nov. 1932, Gaimushō kiroku, 251 (original in English).

⁶¹ Carstensen, American Enterprise in Foreign Markets, 64–65, 81.

⁶² “Strikers Wreck Singer Office,” Japan Advertiser 21 Jan. 1933, in Gaimushō kiroku, 818–19.

⁶³ On fate of Tokyo employees, “Gaihi dai 723 gō,” 28 Mar. 1933, Gaimushō kiroku, 961–66. For Osaka, “Gaihi dai 195 gō,” 16 Mar. 1933, Gaimushō kiroku, 955–58.

⁶⁴ Shimozono, Dotōo koete, 159–61, recounts this possibly apocryphal episode in his hagiographie biography of Yamomoto.

⁶⁵ For the manufacturing story, see Kuwahara, “Shoki takokuseki kigyō,” 52–54.

⁶⁶ “Yōkyūsho,” Gaimushō kiroku, 427, gives prices for comparable machines offered by Singer (250 yen), Husqvarna (170), Montross (140), Control (120), and the Japanese maker, pine (95).

⁶⁷ Janome mishin shashi hensan iinkai, ed., Janome mishin sōgyō 50 nenshi (Tokyo, 1961), 243.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Janome mishin sōgyō 50 nenshi (1961), 243–54.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 246.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 277.

⁷¹ Caldor, Financing the American Dream, 195–99.

⁷² On rural credit societies in the 1930s, see Embree, John, Suyemura: A Japanese Village (Chicago, 1939), 138–47.Google Scholar On Ose's view of this link, see Janome mishin sōgyō 50 nen shi, 194–200.

⁷³ Benfey, Christopher, The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan (New York, 2003), ch. 1Google Scholar, narrates Manjirō's tale.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 39–40, cites the diary of Francis Hall, who recorded a conversation with Manjirō to this effect in July 1860.

⁷⁵ Shingaa saihō, in “Monbusho kaji kagaku tenrankai shuppin, saihō mishin ni kansuru setsumei sho” [Explanation of Sewing Machine Use, for Ministry of Education Exposition of Household Sciences], 30 Oct. 1918. Gakuji kankei kenmei mokuroku (Tokyo-fu, Tokyo-shi). Held at Tokyo Metropolitan Public Records Office.

⁷⁶ “Jōhin na mishin shishū: fujin ni susumetaki fukugyō” [Elegant Machine Embroidery: Sidejobs Recommended for Women], Fujin Sekai 14 (Feb. 1919): 129–31.

⁷⁷ “Shingaa mishin katarogu,” held in collection of Edo-Tokyo Museum, item #91222542, undated.

⁷⁸ On “modernologists,” see Silverberg, Miriam, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley, 2006).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Chiyo, Nakayama, Nihon Fujin yōsō shi (Tokyo, 1987), 397–98, 414–15.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ On Singer sales worldwide, see Godley, “Selling the Sewing Machine.” On its 1950s position, see Gilbert Burck, “Mighty Singer's New Competition,” Fortune (Feb. 1959).

⁸¹ kyōkai, Nihon mishin, ed., Nihon mishin sangyō shi (Tokyo, 1961), 1–5.Google Scholar Burck, “Mighty Singer's New Competition,” 106.

⁸² de Grazia, Victoria, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).Google Scholar