ABSTRACT
Prior to Starbucks’ arrival in Japan, doubts were expressed as to the measure of its compatibility with Japanese culture. Coffee represents a fascinating case for exploring these realities. Simultaneously a powerful substance and a potent symbol, it has been imported and exported, imagined and reimagined across times and civilizations, becoming in the process a multilayered text intertwined in the social, cultural, and economic circumstances of its environment. Global coffee chains “package” coffee in an appealing cultural envelope, creating a surrogate landscape comprised of vague urbanity, Third World aura, and Euro-American imagery. The advent of global postmodernity has blurred not only the distinction between the authentic and the surrogate but also the boundaries between “space” and “place.” Analyzing the encounter between desire and its satisfaction, the consumer and the product, grants the reader a deeper understanding of how the world of commodities changes the reader and how the people change the world.
