A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan is an unprecedented collection of original essays by some of the field’s most distinguished scholars of Japan which, taken together, offer a comprehensive overview of the field. Aiming to retire stale and misleading stereotypes, the authors present new perspectives on Japanese culture and society – past and present – in accessible language.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan covers a broad range of issues, controversies, and everyday practices, including the unacknowledged colonial roots of anthropology in the Japanese academy; legacies of nationalist research; eugenics and nation-building; majority and minority cultures; class and status; genders and sexualities; urban spectacle and rural 'undevelopment'; domestic, corporate, and educational ideologies and practices; the mass media, leisure, and 'infotainment' industries; women’s and men’s sports; fashion and food cultures; ideas of nature, life, and death; new and folk religions; and science and biotechnology.

Collectively, these chapters not only demonstrate Japan’s significance for anthropological research but also help make Japanese society accessible to readers unfamiliar with the country. A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan is a reference volume for scholars, but is also designed to serve as a primary text for courses in anthropology and sociology, history, and Japan and East Asian Studies.

Jennifer Robertson is Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Robertson has published many articles and book chapters on a wide spectrum of subjects ranging from the seventeenth century to the present. Her most recent research projects include Japanese colonial culture-making, eugenic modernity, war art, and comparative bioethics. She is the author of Native and Newcomer: Making and Unmaking a Japanese City (1991), Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (1998), and editor of Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2004). She is finishing a new book, Blood and Beauty: Eugenic Modernity and Empire in Japan.