Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Differentiation and Uncertainty -- Part I. Change Over Time -- Chapter 1. Work and Life in Challenging Times: A Kansai Family Across the Generations -- Chapter 2. Being a Man in a Straitened Japan: The View from Twenty Years Later -- Part II. Work Conditions and Experiences -- Chapter 3. Working Women of the Bubble Generation -- Chapter 4. "Making an Ant's Forehead of Difference": Organic Agriculture as an Alternative Lifestyle in Japan -- Chapter 5. Shelf Lives and the Labors of Loss: Food, Livelihoods, and Japan's Convenience Stores -- Part III. Exploring New Roles and Identities -- Chapter 6. Single Women in Marriage and Employment Markets in Japan -- Chapter 7. The Aging of the Japanese Family: Meanings of Grandchildren in Old Age -- Chapter 8. Barrier-Free Brothels: Sex Volunteers, Prostitutes, and People with Disabilities -- Part IV. Making Social Ties -- Chapter 9. Recreating Connections: Nonprofit Organizations' Attempts to Foster Networking among Mothers of Preschoolers -- Chapter 10. The Divination Arts in Girl Culture -- Part V. Persisting Patterns and Continuities -- Chapter 11. Education after the "Lost Decade(s)": Stability or Stagnation? -- Chapter 12. Lightweight Cars and Women Drivers: The De/construction of Gender Metaphors in Recessionary Japan -- Chapter 13. The Story of a Seventy-Three-Year-Old Woman Living Alone: Her Thoughts on Death Rites -- Glossary -- Contributors -- Index.