First Published in 1990. In this extraordinary work of research and informed observation, Jeannie Lo describes her experiences as an OL ('office lady') and working as a factory woman on a typewriter assembly line at Brother Industries in Nagoya, Japan..

In large corporations in Japan, much of the clerical work is carried out by young women known as "office ladies" (OLs) or "flowers of the workplace." Largely nameless, OLs serve tea to the men and type and file their reports. They are exempt from the traditional lifetime employment and have few opportunities for promotion. In this engaging ethnography, Yuko Ogasawara exposes the ways that these women resist men's power, and why the men, despite their exclusive command of authority, often subject themselves to the women's control. Ogasawara, a Japanese sociologist trained in the United States, skillfully mines perceptive participant-observation analyses and numerous interviews to outline the tensions and humiliations of OL work. She details the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that OLs who are frustrated by demeaning, dead-end jobs thwart their managers and subvert the power structure to their advantage. Using gossip, outright work refusal, and public gift-giving as manipulative strategies, they can ultimately make or break the careers of the men. This intimate and absorbing analysis illustrates how the relationships between women and work, and women and men, are far more complex than the previous literature has shown.

Based on questionnaires and on Lo's two-year stint with the company (1986-87), examines the lives and condition of women working in the offices and on the assembly lines at Brother Industries in Nagoya, Japan. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines young women in Japan, focusing in particular on their transitions to adulthood, their conceptions of adulthood and relations with Japanese society more generally. It considers important aspects of the transition to adulthood including employment, marriage, divorce, childbirth and custody.

Recent studies report that Japanese is the second most productive source of new loanwords to English. Such studies indicate that English-speaking countries are paying more attention to Japan than ever before. This dictionary lists and defines hundreds of terms borrowed from Japanese that are now used in English-language publications. Entries provide variant spellings, pronunciation, etymological information, definitions, and illustrative quotations. These quotations were collected from books, newspapers, magazines, novels, texts, advertisements, and databases published or distributed in the United States between 1964 and 1995. When countries engage in a significant amount of commercial or cultural contact, they frequently borrow words from each other's language. These loanwords are assimilated to varying degrees and show how one country gains exposure to another country's culture. Recent studies report that Japanese is the second most productive source of new loanwords to English, showing that English-speaking countries are paying more attention to Japan than ever before. This dictionary includes entries for hundreds of Japanese terms now used in English-language publications. Included are terms from art and architecture, medicine and the sciences, business and education, philosophy and religion, and numerous other fields. Entries provide definitions, pronunciations, variant spellings, etymological histories, and illustrative quotations. These quotations were collected from books, newspapers, magazines, novels, texts, advertisements, and databases, all of which were published or distributed in the United States between 1964 and 1995. While the volume is a valuable guide to the meaning and assimilation of particular loanwords, it is also a fascinating chronicle of how certain elements of Japanese culture have strongly influenced American civilization.

It is a time when women in many parts of the world are questioning the roles, life styles, and values by which women have lived for centuries. The contributors are American women engaged in studying various aspects of the life patterns of Japanese women in many walks of life and have published their findings in this volume. We come from a variety

In Imperial times in Japan, women were subservient inferiors; in theory they were liberated by the democratic constitution imposed by the US after World War II; but, in real-life Japan, change is glacially slow. Here, that slow-changing reality is juxtaposed with the fast-moving aspirations of Japanese women. The author achieves this through wide-ranging interviews with Japanese women, and by using a range of contemporay Japanese literature.

One third of the Japanese female workforce are 'office ladies' and their training takes place in the many women's junior colleges. Office ladies are low-wage, low-status secretaries who have little or no job security. Brian J. McVeigh draws on his experience as a teacher at one such institution to explore the cultural and social processes used to promote 'femininity' in Japanese women. His detailed and ethnographically-informed study considers how the students of these institutions are socialized to fit their future dual roles of employees and mothers, and illuminates the sociopolitical role that the colleges play in Japanese society as a whole.

This book is a provocative analysis of the nature of the relation between women and paid work in both modernizing and industrial countries. It explores the variables that shape the relationship: demographic factors, the social and cultural context, and the direction of economic development.