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.

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.