This book explores “self-searching migrants”, a new group of indefinitely globally mobile people whose purpose of overseas stay is the search of true self and the work they really want to do, using Japanese trans-Pacific sojourners as the case study. Utilizing testimonies collected from interviews with Japanese migrants in their twenties to forties who had entered the job market between the early 1990s and 2010 and left for the English-speaking countries of Canada, Australia and Singapore, the book argues that their practices are both ubiquitous and unique, the products of global and local contexts of a specific time. As semi-skilled migrants from an extra-Western, post-industrial country, their struggles show a different picture of the West-centric world power system from those experienced by migrant workers from the Global South. Including extensive qualitative research and interview material collected over a 20-year period, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese Culture and Society, Cultural Anthropology and Migration.

The subject of the tea ceremony is well researched both in and outside of Japan, but the women who practice it are hardly ever discussed. The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan rectifies this by discussing the meaning of the Japanese tea ceremony for women practitioners in Japan from World War II to the present day. It examines how lay tea ceremony practitioners have been transforming this cultural activity while being, in turn, transformed by it.

The subject of the tea ceremony is well researched both in and outside Japan, but the women who practice it are hardly ever discussed. "The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan" rectifies this by discussing the meaning of the Japanese tea ceremony for women practitioners in Japan from World War II to the present day. It examines how lay tea ceremony practitioners have been transforming this cultural activity whilst being, in turn, transformed by it.
Drawing on Foucault's concept of discipline and focusing primarily on the body, this book illuminates how female ceremony practitioners have empowered themselves through the unique way of using their bodies. In particular the book examines:
* The relationship between the tea ceremony and the body
* Myths surrounding the body
* Body discipline
* Postwar effects on the tea ceremony
* Tea ceremony networks
* Meaning of the ceremony in the lives of women
By combining anthropological observation with historical examination of the tea ceremony, this book radically revises mainstream discourses surrounding women and the tea ceremony in Japan. It will prove of interest to scholars of Japanese Studies, Gender Studies and anthropology alike.