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Hisano Lab
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The lab studies food colors and how people perceive the world through the five senses from the perspective of business history.
AboutAbout the lab
Rethinking how people sense the world through history.
The Hisano Lab studies business history, cultural history, and the history of technology, focusing mainly on the 20th-century United States.
The lab is interested in how today's world has been shaped as changes in politics, economy, society, and culture interact with one another.
It has studied how social norms and cultural values changed as consumerist society spread, also drawing on gender studies.
Recently, the lab has focused on sensory history, studying how technological and industrial development has affected how people experience taste, sight, smell, and other senses.
Key terms
- Business history
- A field of history that studies how companies and businesses have emerged, developed, and interacted with society
- Consumerism
- A way of organizing society in which buying and consuming goods becomes central to people's lives and values
- Sensory history
- A field of history that studies how human perception itself, such as taste, sight, and smell, has changed over time
NewsLab news
View More ↗ResearchResearch themes
This is historical research asking how the development of capitalism has changed the way people perceive the world through the five senses. The lab combines the frameworks of business history, environmental history, the history of technology, and sensory history.
*Illustrative imageThe Business of Making Food "Color"
The lab has studied how business shaped people's sensory experience in the United States from the 1870s to the 1970s. It analyzes how farmers, food processors, dye manufacturers, advertisers, the government, and others constructed the "natural" color of food.
*Illustrative imageThe Visual Environment of Food in Japan
Extending its research on the United States to Japan, the lab examines how the visual environment surrounding the places where people buy and eat food (the foodscape) has changed since the early 20th century. It also explores the meaning of modernization and Westernization from the Taisho period onward.
*Illustrative imageA History of Capitalism and the Making of the Senses
The lab studies how the "aesthetics" of human perception and sensation as a whole have changed through the development of capitalism, from the late 19th century to today. It does so by comparing the United States with Japan, China, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
MembersFaculty
- Associate ProfessorAi HisanoPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images.
- Top image: “Colorful juice cubes gummy candy” Fumikas Sagisavas / CC0 (cropped)
- The Business of Making Food "Color": “Swift oleomargarine newspaper ad” Swift Meat Packing Co. / Public domain (cropped)
- The Visual Environment of Food in Japan: “Food samples 1” Lombroso / Public domain (cropped)
- A History of Capitalism and the Making of the Senses: “Products on display at Diptyque” Mx. Granger / CC0 (cropped)
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