Department stores have served as an important commercial and cultural institution that helped transform retailing systems, consumption patterns, and people’s tastes in many countries since the late-1840s when the first department store was born in Paris. Yet the adaptation of their business and its influence were contingent on social contexts. In Japan, department store restaurants became a landmark for Japanese shoppers not only to rest while shopping but also to enjoy occasional eating-out experiences with their families.
Department store restaurants contributed to the restructuring of department stores not only by providing new food services but, more importantly, by offering emotional labor through their waitresses, or so-called 'restaurant girls,' who were mostly ages 15 to 18. These young female employees played an instrumental role in presenting the modern image of a department store in a highly gendered way. In analyzing restaurant girls’ emotional labor, I argue that their modernness rested on the nature of their work as much as on their appearance with Western hairstyles and dresses.
Restaurant girls’ new form of labor entailed the incorporation of personality into business management. As service providers, their dispositions, including charming personalities associated with femininity, were significant prerequisites for employment. Once they were hired, the presentation of their feminine personality, particularly through a smile, constituted an important part of their job. By specifying a certain type of personality based on contemporary gender norms, department stores’ recruitment policies served to categorize and select 'appropriate' women and reinforce the idealized image of the gendered body and personal dispositions. In the modern commercial world, not only did the performance of personality become gendered, but it also became productive.