Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : the stakes of intimacy in contemporary Japan / Allison Alexy -- Students outside the classroom : youth's intimate experiences in 1990s Japan / Yukari Kawahara -- Resisting intervention, (en)trusting my partner : unmarried women's narratives about contraceptive use in Tokyo / Shana Fruehan Sandberg -- Romantic and sexual intimacy before and beyond marriage / Laura Dales and Beverley Yamamoto -- What can be said? : communicating intimacy in millennial Japan / Allison Alexy -- My husband is a good man when he doesn't hit me : redefining intimacy among victims of domestic violence / Kaoru Kuwajima -- Power, intimacy, and irregular employment in Japan / Emma E. Cook -- Manhood and the burdens of intimacy / Elizabeth Miles -- Gender identity, desire, and intimacy : sexual scripts and x-gender / S.P.F. Dale -- Beyond blood ties : intimate kinships in Japanese foster and adoptive care / Kathryn Goldfarb -- Making ordinary, if not ideal, intimate relationships : Japanese-Chinese transnational matchmaking / Chigusa Yamaura -- Connections, conflicts, and experiences of intimacy in Japanese-Australian families / Diana Adis Tahhan -- Reflections on fieldwork : exploring intimacy / Allison Alexy and Emma E. Cook.

In contemporary Japan, as the Japanese population ages, the low birth rate shrinks the population, and decades of recession radically restructure labor markets' intimate relationships, norms, and ideals are concurrently shifting. This volume explores a broad range of intimate practices in Japan in the first decades of the 2000s to trace how social change is manifests through deeply personal choices. From young people making decisions about birth control to spouses struggling to connect with each other, parents worrying about stigma faced by their adopted children, and queer people creating new terms to express their identifications, Japanese intimacies are commanding a surprising amount of attention, both within and beyond Japan. With ethnographic analysis focused on how intimacy is imagined, enacted, and discussed, the volume offers rich and complex portraits of how people balance personal desires with feasible possibilities and shifting social norms.

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