A Reference List of Ethnographic Monographs on Japan – in chronological order
Compiled by William W. Kelly (through 2011) and Chris McMorran (2012+)
[Kelly’s original description] The list is limited to English-language monographs whose research was based substantially on extended fieldwork and which deal ethnographically with topics in Japan anthropology. Needless to say, this hardly exhausts the significant literature in Japan anthropology, which draws on many research methods and is published in other forms. The list is in chronological order of publication.
William Kelly’s (Yale) original list covered works published from 1939-2011. With his permission I have continued this reference tool by adding works published from 2012 onward, as well as links to the publisher’s page and book reviews. As the field of Anthropology continues to change, other fields utilize ethnographic methods in/about Japan (including Sociology, Geography, Ethnomusicology, and more), and the boundaries of what constitutes Japan (and Japanese Studies) are understood as fuzzier than previously believed, this list aims to be more inclusive.
Email Chris McMorran (mcmorran [at] nus.edu.sg) to suggest additional titles or add the book/review details here and I’ll update the list occasionally: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jwsElo7diXzG-osPl06oC80XCO89mPxlSDTgl4BaDUA/edit?usp=sharing
1939 John F. Embree Suye Mura: A Japanese Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1954 Edward Norbeck Takashima: A Japanese Fishing Community. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
1956 John B. Cornell and Robert J. Smith Two Japanese Villages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies.
1958 Ronald P. Dore City Life in Japan: A Study of a Tokyo Ward. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1959 Richard K. Beardsley, John W. Hall and Robert E. Ward Village Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1963 Ezra F. Vogel Japan’s New Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1964 David W. Plath The After Hours: Modern Japan and the Search for Enjoyment. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1966 William P. Lebra Okinawan Religion: Belief, Ritual, and Social Structure. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1967 John Singleton Nichū: A Japanese School. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
1971 Robert E. Cole Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1973 Ronald P. Dore British Factory-Japanese Factory. London: Allen & Unwin.
1974 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney The Ainu of the Northwest Coast of Southern Sakhalin. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
1974 Thomas P. Rohlen For Harmony and Strength: Japanese White-Collar Organization in Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1974 Robert J. Smith Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1975 Bernard Bernier Breaking the Cosmic Circle: Religion in a Japanese Village. Ithaca: Cornell University China-Japan Program.
1976 Erwin Henry Johnson Nagura Mura: An Ethnohistorical Analysis. Ithaca: Cornell University China-Japan Program.
1976 Shimpo Mitsuru Three Decades in Shiwa: Economic Development and Social Change in a Japanese Farming Community. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
1978 Ronald P. Dore Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village. New York: Pantheon.
1978 Edward Norbeck Country to City: The Urbanization of a Japanese Hamlet. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
1978 Robert J. Smith Kurusu: The Price of Progress in a Japanese Village, 1951-1975. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1978 Yoshiko Yamamoto The Namahage: A Festival in the Northeast of Japan. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
1979 Rodney Clark The Japanese Company. New Haven: Yale University Press.
1980 Winston B. Davis Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1980 Margaret Lock East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1980 David W. Plath Long Engagements: Maturity in Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1980 David K. Reynolds The Quiet Therapies: Japanese Pathways to Personal Growth. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
1981 Walter L. Ames Police and Community in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1981 Joy Hendry Marriage in Changing Japan. London: St. Martin’s Press.
1981 Arne Kalland Shingu: A Japanese Fishing Community. London: Curzon Press.
1981 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Illness and Health among the Sakhalin Ainu: A Symbolic Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1982 Robert J. Smith and Ella Lury Wiswell The Women of Suye Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1983 Gail Lee Bernstein Haruko’s World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1983 Samuel J. Coleman Family Planning in Japanese Society: Traditional Birth Control in a Modern Urban Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1983 Liza Crichfield Dalby Geisha. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1983 Nelson H. H. Graburn To Pray, Pay, and Play: The Cultural Structure of Japanese Domestic Tourism. Aix-En-Provence Cedex: Centre Des Hautes Etudes Touristique.
1983 Thomas P. Rohlen Japan’s High Schools. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1984 Helen Hardacre Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1984 Takie Sugiyama Lebra Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
1984 Susan Orpett Long Family Change and the Life Course in Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University China-Japan Program.
1984 Robert C. Marshall Collective Decision Making in Rural Japan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies.
1984 Brian Moeran Lost Innocence: Folk Craft Potters of Onta, Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1984 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan: An Anthropological View. New York: Cambridge University Press.
1985 Brian Moeran Okubo Diary: Portrait of a Japanese Valley. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1985 Cornelius Ouwehand Hateruma: Socio-Religious Aspects of a South-Ryūkyūan Island Culture. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
1986 Joy Hendry Becoming Japanese: The World of the Pre-School Child. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1987 Anne E. Imamura Urban Japanese Housewives: At Home and in the Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1987 Merry I. White The Japanese Educational Challenge: A Commitment to Children. New York: Free Press.
1988 Stewart E. Guthrie A Japanese New Religion: Rissho Kosei-Kai in a Mountain Hamlet. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies.
1988 Sharon J. Traweek Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
1988. Merry White, The Japanese Overseas, New York: Free Press,
1989 Theodore C. Bestor Neighborhood Tokyo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1989 Walter D. Edwards Modern Japan through Its Weddings: Gender, Person, and Society in Ritual Portrayal. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1989 Ok-pyo Moon From Paddy Field to Ski Slope: The Revitalisation of Tradition in Japanese Village Life. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
1990 Roger Goodman Japan’s “International Youth”: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Reviewed in: American Anthropologist, 94/3 1992; American Journal of Sociology, 97/6 1992; Comparative Education Review, 36/4 1992; Contemporary Sociology, 25/1 1996; Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16/3 1993; Ethnos, 59, 1-2 1994; International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 34, 3-4 1993; JALT Journal, 15/2 1993; Japan Times, 20 November 1990 and 13 October 1992; Journal of Anthropological Research, 48/3 1992; Journal of Asian Studies, 50/4 1991; Journal of Japanese Studies, 18/1 1992; Mainichi Daily News, 22 June 1991; Man, 26/3 1991; Nihon Rōdō Kenkyū Zasshi (JIL), 392 1992; Monumenta Nipponica, 46/4 1992; Pacific Review, 5/1 1993; Sociological Review, 40/1 1992; TES, 5 October 1990; THES, 962, 12 April 1991; TLS, 4605, 5 July 1991) —- 1992. 帰国子女：新しい特権層の出現 Kikokushijo: Atarashii Tokkensō no Shutsugen (translated by Nagashima Nobuhiro and Shimizu Satomi), 岩波書店 Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo. (A revised and abridged Japanese version of the book above) (Reviewed in: Eigo Kyōiku, April 1993; Ekonomisuto, 18 May 1993; Ibunkakan Kyōiku, No. 7; Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 17 January 1993; Sankei Shinbun, 2 February 1993; Shūkan Bunshun, 28 January 1994; Shūkan Yomiuri, 13 September 1992; Yamagata Nichinichi Shinbun 18 January 1993; Yomiuri Shinbun, 4 January 1993)
1990 Matthews Masayuki Hamabata Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese Business Family. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
1990 Dorinne K. Kondo Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1990 Jeannie Lo Office Ladies and Factory Women: Life and Work at a Japanese Company. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
1990 Richard H. Moore Japanese Agriculture: Patterns of Rural Development. Boulder: Westview Press.
1990 Paul H. Noguchi Delayed Departures, Overdue Arrivals: Industrial Familism and the Japanese National Railways. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1991 Jennifer L. Anderson An Introduction to Japanese Tea Ritual. Albany: State University of New York Press.
1991 Jackson H. Bailey Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Study of Political and Economic Change in a Tohoku Village. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1991 Eyal Ben-Ari Changing Japanese Suburbia: A Study of Two Present-Day Localities. London and New York: Kegan Paul International.
1991 John J. Donohue The Forge of the Spirit: Structure, Motion, and Meaning in the Japanese Martial Tradition. New York and London: Garland.
1991 Hamada Tomoko American Enterprise in Japan. Albany: State University of New York Press.
1991 Lois Taniuchi Peak Learning to Go to School in Japan: The Transition from Home to Preschool Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1991 Jennifer Ellen Robertson Native and Newcomer: Making and Remaking a Japanese City. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1991 Sato Ikuya Kamikaze Biker: Parody and Anomie in Affluent Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1993 Michael Ashkenazi Matsuri: Festivals of a Japanese Town. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1993 Joy Hendry Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies. New York: Oxford University Press.
1993 Takie Sugiyama Lebra Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1993 David C. Lewis The Unseen Face of Japan. Tunbridge Wells, Kent, GB: Monarch Publications.
1993 Margaret Lock Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1993 Okano Kaori School to Work Transition in Japan: An Ethnographic Study. Clevedon, Philadelphia, and Adelaide: Multilingual Matters.
1993. Merry White The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America, Berkeley: University of California Press.
1994 Matthew Allen Undermining the Japanese Miracle: Work and Conflict in a Japanese Coalmining Community. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
1994 Anne Allison Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Club. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1994 Scott F. Clark Japan, a View from the Bath. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1994 Glenda S. Roberts Staying on the Line: Blue-Collar Women in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1995 Laurie Graham On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese Model and the American Worker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
1995 Marilyn Ivy Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
1995 Catherine C. Lewis Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
1995 Christena L. Turner Japanese Workers in Protest: An Ethnography of Consciousness and Experience. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1996 Akiko Hashimoto The Gift of Generations: Japanese and American Perspectives on Aging and the Social Contract. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
1996 Gordon Mathews What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1996 Brian Moeran A Japanese Advertising Agency: An Anthropology of Media and Markets. Richmond, Surrey GB: Curzon Press.
1996 John K. Nelson A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
1997 Eyal Ben-Ari Body Projects in Japanese Childcare: Culture, Organization and Emotions in a Preschool. Richmond, Surrey, GB: Curzon Press.
1997 Eyal Ben-Ari Japanese Childcare: An Interpretive Study of Culture and Organization. London and New York: Kegan Paul International.
1997 Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni Packaged Japaneseness: Weddings, Business and Brides. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Books.
1997 Brian J. McVeigh Life in a Japanese Women’s College: Learning to Be Ladylike. London and New York: Routledge.
1997 Brian J. McVeigh Spirits, Selves, and Subjectivity in a Japanese New Religion: The Cultural Psychology of Belief in Shūkyō Mahikari. Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen.
1997 Brian Moeran Folk Art Potters of Japan: Beyond an Anthropology of Aesthetics. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Books.
1997 Sonia Ryang North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity. Boulder: Westview Press.
1997 Carolyn S. Stevens On the Margins of Japanese Society: Volunteers and the Welfare of the Urban Underclass. London and New York: Routledge.
1998 Ogasawara Yuko Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1998 James E. Roberson Japanese Working Class Lives: An Ethnographic Study of Factory Workers. London and New York: Routledge.
1998 Jennifer Ellen Robertson Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1999 Suzanne Culter Managing Decline: Japan’s Coal Industry Restructuring and Community Response. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press.
1999 Jeffrey Lesser Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
1999 David L. McConnell Importing Diversity: Inside Japan’s Jet Program. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
1999 John A. Mock Culture, Community and Change: Social Change in a Sapporo Neighborhood, 1925-1988. Edwin Mellon.
1999 Aviad E. Raz Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center <Distributed by Harvard University Press>.
1999 Scott Schnell The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1999 Heung Wah Wong Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
1999 Lisa Yoneyama Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2000 Fukuoka Yasunori Lives of Young Koreans in Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
2000 Roger Goodman Children of the Japanese State: The Changing Role of Child Protection Institutions in Contemporary Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Reviewed in Journal of Asian Studies, 62/4 2003; Monumenta Nipponica, 59/4, 2004; Japanese Studies, 24/2, 2004; Contemporary Sociology, 32/6, 2004; American Journal of Sociology, 110/2, 2004; Japan Society of London Website of Book Reviews, 2005) —– 2006. 日本の児童養護：児童養護学への招待 Nihon no Jidōyōgo: Jidōyōgogaku e no Shōtai (translated by Tsuzaki Tetsuo), 明石書店 Akashi Shoten, Tokyo. (A revised and abridged Japanese version of the book above) (Reviewed in: Kumamoto Nichi Nichi Shinbun, 25 June 2006; Shakaifukushikenkyū, No. 96, July 2006; Kikan Jidō Yōgo, 37/1, 2006; Aiiku Jigyo Web Reviews, August 2006; Satooya to Kodomo,Vol. 1, October 2006; Atarashii Kazoku, Vol. 49, 2006; Kodomo no Gyakutai to Neglect, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2006; Shinano Mainichi Shinbun, 17 Dec 2006; Bunraku Kaihō Kenkyū, No. 178, Oct 2007.)
2020. (with Jeremy Breaden), Family-run universities in Japan: Sources of inbuilt resilience in the face of demographic pressure, 1992-2030, Oxford University Press, 2020. (Reviewed in: Higher Education, Jan.2021; Contemporary Japan, Dec. 2021; Higher Education Quarterly, Mar.2022; Asia Pacific Review of Education, Apr.2022.)
2000 Joy Hendry The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display. Oxford: Berg.
2000 John K. Nelson Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
2000 John W. Traphagan Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan. New York: SUNY Press.
2001 Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa and Gerald K. LeTendre Intense Years: How Japanese Adolescents Balance School, Family, and Friends. New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer.
2001 Tom Gill Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan. Albany: SUNY Press.
2001 Karen Kelsky Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams. Durham: Duke University Press.
2001 Gerald K. LeTendre and Rebecca Erwin Fukuzawa Intense Years: How Japanese Adolescents Balance School, Family, and Friends. Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis.
2001 Daniel Touro Linger No One Home: Brazilian Selves Remade in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2001 Margaret Lock Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2001 Louella L. Matsunaga The Changing Face of Japanese Retail: Working in a Chain Store. London and New York: Routledge.
2001 Suzuki Hikaru The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2001 Leng Leng Thang Generations in Touch: Linking the Old and Young in a Tokyo Neighborhood. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
2002 Matthew Allen Identity and Resistance in Okinawa. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
2002 Aviad E. Raz Emotions at Work: Normative Control, Organizations, and Culture in Japan and America. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.
2002 Joshua Hotaka Roth Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
2002 Merry White. Perfectly Japanese: Making Family in an Era of Upheaval Berkeley: University of California Press
2002 Christine R. Yano Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.
2003 Kaye Broadbent Women’s Employment in Japan: The Experience of Part-Time Workers. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
2003 Rupert A. Cox The Zen Arts: An Anthropological Study of the Culture of Aesthetic Form in Japan. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon.
2003 Daniela de Carvalho Migrants and Identity in Japan and Brazil: The Nikkeijin. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
2003 Fiona Graham Inside the Japanese Company. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon.
2003 John Knight Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
2003 Katherine Heather Rupp Gift-Giving in Japan: Cash, Connections, Cosmologies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2003 Ellen L. Schattschneider Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
2003 Laura Spielvogel Working out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
2003 Tsuda Takeyuki Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japan Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.
2004 Theodore C. Bestor Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2004 Kato Etsuko The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
2004 Dolores P. Martinez Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Diving Community: The Making and Becoming of Person and Place. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2004 John W. Traphagan The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan. New York: Carolina Academic Press.
2004 G. Peter Witteveen The Renaissance of Takefu: How People and the Local Past Changed the Civic Life of a Regional Japanese Town. London and New York: Routledge.
2004 Wu Yongmei The Care of the Elderly in Japan. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
2005 Amy Borovoy The Too-Good Wife: Alcohol, Codependency, and the Politics of Nurturance in Postwar Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2005. Laura Dales. Feminist Movements in Contemporary Japan. London: Routledge. (Review by Hidaka in Australian Feminist Studies; Review by Dalton in Asian Studies Review)
2005 Fiona Graham A Japanese Company in Crisis: Ideology, Strategy, and Narrative. Oxford: Routledge Curzon.
2005 Kawano Satsuki Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
2005 Kurotani Sawa Home Away from Home: Japanese Corporate Wives Overseas in the United States. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
2005 Susan Orpett Long Final Days: Japanese Culture and Choice at the End of Life. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
2005 Brian Moeran The Business of Ethnography: Strategic Exchanges, People and Organizations. New York: Berg.
2005 Lynne Y. Nakano Community Volunteers in Japan: Everyday Stories of Social Change. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon.
2005 Ian Reader Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
2006 Ian Condry Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.
2006 Laura Miller Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2006 Karen Nakamura Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
2006 Ozawa-de Silva Chikako Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan. London and New York: Routledge.
2006 Arne Røkkum Nature, Ritual, and Society in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. London and New York: Routledge.
2007 Peter Cave Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality and Learning in Elementary Education. Abingdon [England] and New York: Routledge.
2007 Sabine Frühstück Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2007 Ihara Ryoji Toyota’s Assembly Line: A View from the Factory Floor. Melbourne: Trans-Pacific Press.
2007 Ruth Martin The Japanese Housewife Overseas: Adapting to Change of Culture and Status. Folkestone, Kent, U.K.: Global Oriental.
2007 Mitchell W. Sedgwick Globalisation and Japanese Organisational Culture: An Ethnography of a Japanese Corporation in France. London and New York: Routledge.
2008 Lorie Brau Rakugo: Performing Comedy and Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Tokyo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
2008 Christopher Nelson Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
2009 Lieba Faier Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
2009 Ellen Veronica Fuller Going Global: Culture, Gender, and Authority in the Japanese Subsidiary of an American Corporation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
2009 Ekaterina Hertog Tough Choices: Bearing an Illegitimate Child in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
2009 Kurihara Tomoko Japanese Corporate Transition in Time and Space. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
2009 Jennifer Milioto Matsue. Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene. New York: Routledge. (Japanese Studies Review by Overell; Ethnomusicology Forum Review by Brunt)
2009 Okano Kaori H. Young Women in Japan: Transitions to Adulthood. London and New York: Routledge. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Hirao; Pacific Affairs Review by Okano)
2010 Inge Marie Daniels. The Japanese House: Material Culture in the Modern Home. London: Berg Press. (Social Science Japan Journal Review by Whitelaw; Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space Review by Gygi; Housing Studies Review by Ronald)
2010 Kawano Satsuki. Nature’s Embrace: Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Kurotani; Asian Ethnology Review by Mock)
2010 Gabriella Lukács. Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. Durham: Duke University Press. (Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Review by Thiam; The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Review by Allan; Social Science Japan Journal Review by Cook; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Clammer; Cinema Journal Review by Shibamoto-Smith)
2010 Marvin Dale Sterling. Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Novak; Pacific Affairs Review by Occhi)
2010 Gregory S. Poole. The Japanese Professor: An Ethnography of a University Faculty. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (Southeast Review of Asian Studies Review by Gump; Asian Anthropology Review by Creaser)
2011 Chiba Kaeko. Japanese Women, Class and the Tea Ceremony: The Voices of Tea Practitioners in Northern Japan. London: Routledge.
2011 Fu Huiyan. An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers. Oxford: Routledge.
2011 Peter Wynn Kirby. Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Monumenta Nipponica Review by Gill; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Thomas)
2011 Jennifer Sally Prough. Straight from the Heart : Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shōjo Manga. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Japan Forum Review by McLaren; Monumenta Nipponica Review by Napier)
2011 Roman A. Cybriwsky. Roppongi Crossing. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.
2012 Shawn Bender. Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion. University of California Press. (Japan Forum Review by Alaszewska; Journal of Asian Studies Review by Smith)
2012 Michelle Bigenho. Intimate Distance: Andean Music in Japan. Durham: Duke University. (SSJJ Review by Gillan; American Ethnologist Review by Matsue; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Atkins; Latin American Music Review Review by Wong; The Americas Review by Rivas; Notes Review by Gauthier-Mercier; Popular Music Review by De Beukelaer; Journal of Asian Studies Review by Suzuki)
2012 Christoph Brumann. Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto: Claiming a Right to the Past. London; New York: Routledge. (SSJJ Review by White; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Dusinberre)
2012 Martin Dusinberre. Hard Times in the Homeland: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Journal of Asian Studies Reiew by Kirby; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Platt; Monumenta Nipponica Review by Watanabe; Journal of Interdisciplinary History by Kelly)
2012 Matt Gillan. Songs from the Edge of Japan: Music-making in Yaeyama and Okinawa. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Johnson; Asian Music Review by Deschênes; Notes Review by McClimon)
2012 Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni. Housewives of Japan: An Ethnography for Real Lives and Consumerized Domesticity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (American Ethnologist Review by Allison)
2012 Junko Kitanaka. Depression in Japan: Psychiatric Cures for a Society in Distress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Anthropological Quarterly Review by Applbaum; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Review by Picone; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Burns; History of the Human Sciences Review by Angel; Bulletin of the History of Medicine Review by Takabayashi)
2012 Merry I. White. Coffee Life in Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (SSJJ Review by Whitelaw; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Goldstein-Gidoni; Journal of American-East Asian Relations Review by Zhen; Journal of Asian Studies Review by Assmann; Gastronomica Review by Laurent; Japanese Studies Review by Farrer)
2012 Donald C. Wood Ogata-mura: Sowing Dissent and Reclaiming Identity in a Japanese Farming Village. New York: Berghahn Books. (Agricultural History review by Assmann; Asian Anthropology Review by Smith; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Review by Cox)
2013 Anne Allison. Precarious Japan. Durham and London: Duke University Press. (Japan Forum Review by Rosenbaum; Japanese Studies Review by Karlsson; Journal of Asian Studies Review by Thomas)
2013 Carolyn S. Stevens. Disability in Japan. London: Routledge. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Traphagan)
2013 David Novak. Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durhan, NC and London: Duke University Press. (Japan Forum Review by Service; Perfect Beat Review by Rosemary; American Anthropologist Review by Matsue; American Ethnologist Review by Stevens; Notes Review by Brown; Asian Music Review by Atkins; Journal of Popular Music Studies Review by Reed; Journal of Asian Studies Review by Aalgaard)
2013 Ian Condry. The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. Durham: Duke University Press. (American Anthropologist Review by Yamaguchi; American Ethnologist Review by Edwards; Southeast Review of Asian Studies Review by Johnson; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by McCaskey; Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema Review by Kim; Asian Studies Review by McLelland)
2013 Karen Nakamura. A Disability of the Soul: an Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (SSJJ Review by Ikeda; American Anthropologist Review by Littlewood; Medical Anthropology Quarterly Review by Myers; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Borovoy; Contemporary Sociology Review; American Journal of Psychiatry Review by Hashimoto)
2013 Miyazaki Hirokazu. Arbitraging Japan: Dreams of Capitalism at the End of Finance. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Japan Forum Review by Sedgwick; American Ethnologist Review by Rosenberger; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Bryan; Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute by Greenhouse)
2014 Bonnie Wade. Composing Japanese Musical Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Atkins; Review in Asian Music by Sheppard; Review in Journal of Asian Studies by Aalgaard)
2014 Carl Cassegård. Youth Movements, Trauma and Alternative Space in Contemporary Japan. Leiden: Brill. (Review in Japanese Studies by Brown; Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Avenell)
2014 Diana Adis Tahhan. The Japanese Family: Touch, Intimacy and Feeling. London: Routledge.
2014 Jason Danely. Aging and Loss: Mourning and Maturity in Contemporary Japan. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. (Review in American Ethnologist by Borovoy; Review in Anthropological Quarterly by Nozawa; Review in Asian Anthropology by Mathews)
2014 Joseph D. Hankins. Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Review in Journal of Asian Studies by Sooudi; Review in Monumenta Nipponica by Botsman; Review in American Anthropologist by Cook; Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Neary)
2014 Katrina L. Moore. The Joy of Noh: Embodied Learning and Discipline in Urban Japan. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. (Review in Pacific Affairs by Danely; Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Nelson; Review in American Anthropologist by Kagaya; Review in Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute by Keister)
2014 Mark K. Watson. Japan’s Ainu Minority in Tokyo: Diasporic indigeneity and urban politics. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge. (Review in SSJJ by Maher; Cross-Currents Review by Moorehead)
2014 Sébastien Penmellen Boret. Japanese Tree Burial: Ecology, Kinship and the Culture of Death. London: Routledge. (Review in SSJJ by Whitelaw; Review in Asian Anthropology by Mathews; Review in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies by Rots; Review in Mortality by Maclean; Review in Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology by Shakuto)
2015 Akihiro Ogawa. Lifelong Learning in Neoliberal Japan: Risk, Community, and Knowledge. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. (Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Aspinall)
2015 Emma E. Cook. Reconstructing Adult Masculinities: Part-time Work in Contemporary Japan. London: Routledge. (Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Taga)
2015 Paul A. Christensen. Japan, Alcoholism, and Masculinity: Suffering and Sobriety in Tokyo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. (SSJJ Review by Mathews; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Robertson; Japanese Studies Review by Nakamura)
2015 Tom Gill. Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer. Lanham: Lexington Books. (SSJJ Review by Allison; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Slater; Japan Forum Review by Weathers; Japanese Studies Review by Trefalt)
2015 Matthew D Marr. Better Must Come: Existing Homelessness in Two Global Cities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Housing Studies Review by Stephenson; International Journal of Comparative Sociology Review by Oakley and Reed; City and Society Review by Rusenko; International Journal of Japanese Sociology Review by Yamamoto; Social Forces Review by Gong; Journal of Housing and the Built Environment by Kornatowski; Urban Geography Review by Jocoy and Zucherman; Journal of Urban Affairs Review by Culhane; IJURR Review by von Mahs; Japan Forum Review by Gill, SSJJ Review by Christensen)
2016 Akiko Takeyama. Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (SSJJ Review by Malick; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Review by Cook; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Gagne)
2016 Amy Catalinac. Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2016 Andrea Arai. The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Yano; Social Anthropology Review by Rich; Journal of Anthropological Research by Xu; Monumenta Nipponica Review by Vickers; Educational Studies in Japan Review by O’Dwyer)
2016 Anne Zacharias-Walsh. Our Unions, Our Selves: The Rise of Feminist Labor Unions in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
2016 ann-elise lewallen. The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan. Santa Fe: University of New Mexico Press. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Ito)
2016 Aya Ezawa. Single Mothers in Contemporary Japan: Motherhood, Class, and Reproductive Practice. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.
2016 Aya Hirata Kimura. Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination after Fukushima. Durham, Newcastle: Duke University Press.
2016 Beata Świtek. Reluctant Intimacies: Japanese Eldercare in Indonesian Hands. New York: Berghahn Books.
2016 Celeste L. Arrington. Accidental Activists: Victim Movements and Government Accountability in Japan and South Korea. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. (SSJJ Review by Steinhoff; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Nottage; Asian Journal of Law and Society Review by Philips; Pacific Affairs Review by Chiavacci; International Journal of Japanese Sociology Review by Hongo)
2016 Noriko Manabe. The Revolution will not be Televised: Protest Music after Fukushima. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Johnson; American Anthropologist Review by Smith; Music and Letters Review by Street; Journal of Popular Music Studies by DiNitto; Journal of Asian Studies by Prescott; MUSICultures Review by Higgins)
2016 Peter Cave. Schooling Selves: Autonomy, Interdependence, and Reform in Japanese Junior High Schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (SSJJ Review by Nonoyama-Tarumi; Japan Forum Review by Aspinall; Contemporary Japan Review by Wang; Comparative Education Review Review by Vickers; Journal of Japanese Studies Review by Imoto; Schools Review by Inukai; Educational Studies in Japan Review by Hanai)
2016 Yukiko Koga. Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2017 Akiko Yoshida. Unmarried Women in Japan: The Drift into Singlehood. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. (SSJJ Review by Nakano)
2017 Genaro Castro-Vázquez. Intimacy and Reproduction in Contemporary Japan. London: Routledge.
2017 Marie Højlund Roesgaard. Moral Education in Japan: Values in a Global Context. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge.
2018 Jennifer Robertson. Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press. (SSJJ Review by Bender; Social Anthropology Review by Wright; Japanese Studies Review by Nelson; GLQ Review by O’Brien; American Anthropologist Review by Marshall; The Journal of Asian Studies Review by Moore; Critical Asian Studies Review by Yamaguchi; Asian Ethnography Review by Metraux)
2018 Levi McLaughlin. Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2018 Linda White. Gender and the Koseki in Contemporary Japan: Surname, Power, and Privilege. London: Routledge.
2018 Michael Fisch. An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2018 Mieko Nishida. Diaspora and Identity: Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press.
2018 Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna. Food Safety after Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship and the Politics of Risk. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2018 Swee-Lin Ho. Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan: Tokyo after Ten. London: Routledge. (Asian Anthropology Review by Nakano; SSJJ Review by Shire)
2018 William W. Kelly. The Sportsworld of the Hanshin Tigers: Professional Baseball in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Podcast discussion in New Books in East Asian Studies)
2019 Suma Ikeuchi. Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Podcast discussion in New Books in East Asian Studies)
2019 Chika Watanabe. Becoming One: Religion, Development, and Environmentalism in a Japanese NGO in Myanmar. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
2019 Iza Kavedžija Making Meaningful Lives: Tales from an Aging Japan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (Review in American Anthropologist by Tsuji; Review in Intl Journal of Care and Caring by Haapio-Kirk; Review in Aging and Society by Nozawa; Review in Anthropology and Humanism by Sheng; Review in Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale by De Togni; Review in Asian Studies Review by Moore; Review in Social Science Japan Journal by Klein)
2020 Roger Goodman, with Jeremy Breaden. Family-run universities in Japan: Sources of inbuilt resilience in the face of demographic pressure, 1992-2030, Oxford University Press, 2020. (Reviewed in: Higher Education, Jan.2021; Contemporary Japan, Dec. 2021; Higher Education Quarterly, Mar.2022; Asia Pacific Review of Education, Apr.2022.) —– 2021. (with Jeremy Breaden) 日本の私立大学はなぜ生き残るのか――人口減少社会と同族経営：1992-2030 Nihon no Shiristu daigaku naze ikinobiru no ka: Jinko kosei shakai to dōzoku keiei, 1992-2030 (translated by Ishikawa Asako), Chūō Kōronsha Sensho Series, Tokyo. (Reviewed in: Nihon Keizai Shibun, 9 October 2021; Asahi Shinbun 30 October 2021; IDE, April 2022)
2020 Gabriele Koch. Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Review in SSJJ by Cook; Review in Japanese Studies by Dandekar; Review in Journal of Japanese Studies by Steger; Review in Anthropological Quarterly by Takeyama; Review in American Anthropologist by Hanna)
2020 John W. Traphagan. Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan. Cambria Press. (Podcast discussion in New Books in East Asian Studies)
2020 Gracia Liu-Farrer. Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. (Podcast discussion in New Books in East Asian Studies)
2020 Allison Alexy. Intimate Disconnections: Divorce and the Romance of Independence in Contemporary Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Podcast discussion in New Books in East Asian Studies; Review in Journal of Asian Studies by Ikeuchi)
2020 Susanne Klien. Urban Migrants in Rural Japan: Between Agency and Anomie in a Post-Growth Society. New York: State University of New York Press. (Review in Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology by Morais; Review in Pacific Affairs by Kingston; Asian Ethnology Podcast episode by author)
2020 Ethel V. Kosminsky. An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants : Childhood, Family, and Work. New York: Lexington Books. (Review in Children’s Geographies by Markowska-Manista)
2021 Chikako Ozawa-de Silva. The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2021. Julie Valk. Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope. Oxon; New York: Routledge. (Japanese Studies review by Hall)
2021. Megha Wadhwa. Indian Migrants in Tokyo: A Study of Socio-Cultural, Religious, and Working Worlds. Oxon; New York: Routledge. (Social Science Japan Journal review by Christopher; IIAS review by Baas)
2022 Giulia De Togni. Fall-out from Fukushima: Nuclear Evacuees Seeking Compensation and Legal Protection After the Triple Meltdown. London: Routledge.
2022 Joshua A. Irizarry. Sōjiji : Discipline, Compassion, and Enlightenment at a Japanese Zen Temple (Michigan Monograph in Japanese Studies). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
2022 Chris McMorran. Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (International Journal of Asian Studies review by Chiba; New Books Network discussion with Traphagan)
2022 Timo Thelen. Revitalization and Internal Colonialism in Rural Japan. London: Routledge.
2023 Niccolò Lollini. Becoming a Farmer in Contemporary Japan. London: Routledge.
2023 James Wright. Robots Won’t Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation. Cornell University Press.
2023 Rafal Zaborowski. Music Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan. Amsterdam University Press.
2024 Paul Hansen. Hokkaido Dairy Farm: Cosmopolitics of Otherness and Security on the Frontiers of Japan. SUNY Press
(Special thanks to Wong Yu Hin Eugene and Jyoti Vinod Vasnani for their work in updating the list, and to everyone who has recommended titles and reviews.)
