This collection brings together diverse analyses of women in Japan-including department store elevator girls, tour bus guides, airline stewardesses, soldiers, soccer players, beauty queens, and educators-who have been intimately involved in the practices and professions of modernity. "This interdisciplinary volume pays serious attention to women's occupations that have been given short shrift. From shop girls to soccer players, these essays show women venturing out across the decades, with the meaning of 'modern' changing as the women themselves challenge the times in which they live. Through these pages, one can see how Japan's 'modern girls' of the historical past still resonate in the present."