The Financial Times on Kickboxing Geishas
The FT's Tokyo bureau chief wrote a nice review of Kickboxing Geishas in the 5/19 weekend section of the paper. Here's the beginning of the review:

What is a Japanese woman? A white-faced geisha? A shrinking office lady, pouring the tea? A coquette, covering her teeth with her hand as she laughs? Or a seemingly downtrodden housewife, who quietly runs the household with a mind of steel?

Women the world over are subject to stereotypes. But few are so carelessly pigeonholed as those from Japan, put into boxes as "exotic", or "submissive" or "inscrutable", but rarely labelled "rounded human being".

Veronica Chambers' Kickboxing Geishas does an admirable job to change that. Based on dozens of interviews with Japanese women, she presents a layered, contradictory picture of a rapidly shifting social landscape in which women play a central and catalytic role.

While many books treat Japan as an onion to be peeled, Chambers goes about things the other way. She gradually adds layers, talking to more people and throwing in new ideas that complicate and confuse but, in the end, illuminate.

The full review is available on the FT's website, but I'm not sure for how long.