Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life

by Mizuko Ito

Book Overview

How mobile communications in Japan became a pervasively personal tool that connects families and friends, creating "always-on" social engagement.

The Japanese term for mobile phone, keitai (roughly translated as "something you carry with you"), evokes not technical capability or freedom of movement but intimacy and portability, defining a personal accessory that allows constant social connection. Japan's enthusiastic engagement with mobile...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262590255
• ISBN13: 9780262590259
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

a deep review on japan keitai/mobile phone culture

This is THE source for understanding japan keitai/mobile culture from early 90s to current. And authors investigate different aspect of keitai in japan life which do help me understand how it is, and why it is. With current issues, Nokia pulls out of japan recently, and iPhone's user are very unhappy about iPhone ( less than 7% iPhone users really like it). All the questions can be answered by this book partially. But this is not a great book by lacking the compare and holistic view as normal anthrography research dose. Anyway, it's worth reading.

an extraordinarily important collection

If you work in the mobile communications space and you aren't Japanese, you probably ought to have a copy of this book. It provides a wealth of data and references on Japanese mobile phone use that have been hidden behind the language barrier for too long. (NB: This is sociology and anthropology data we're talking about, not marketing data. It's data about how people do things and think about things, not how many widgets they bought last year.) Mimi Ito has done the community (particularly the research community) a huge service by getting this collection published.

you can read for sociology or business

In Japan and Europe, cellphone usage is higher than in the United States. Thus to an American reader, this book can be interesting on several levels. Perhaps as a sociological commentary on how Japanese society has accepted and accomodated the pervasive use of the phones. To an extent not currently seen in much of the US, except possibly amongst teenagers in large cities. The book is a fascinating read of how quickly an technological item has become part of the fabric in Japan. The passages on phone etiquette also suggest what might also eventuate here. On a business level, the book can be used for ideas into future usages, in Japan or elsewhere. If you are trying to find a novel business involving cellphones, it helps to study a society that has taken them further.

Great Content! A little hard to read

I have been fascinated by cell phone adoption in Japan for some time. This is a very well researched book on the topic, but it reads just like a boring college text book. This could be due to the fact it was translated from Japanese, but don't let this stop you from buying it.