Kickboxing Geishas
Modern Japanese Woman are Changing Their Country
Japanese women today are the leaders in a sociocultural movement in Japan that is shaking the country's gender stereotypes to their core. Journalist Veronica Chambers explores these explosive changes.
If a geisha's white features were once a familiar archetype, the women of today's Japan wear many faces: girlish and sexy, traditional and trendy, sophisticated and punk. In this fascinating book, Veronica Chambers takes us inside the world of the boundary-busting new Japanese women-the kickboxing geishas-who are freely mixing East and West, burying stereotypes, and defining and electrifying new zeitgeist.
While Japanese men traditionally pledged lifelong loyalty to big business, women began traveling internationally and thinking outside of the bento box. Chambers visited the "new" Japan in 2000 and quickly became caught up in the untold story of the pioneers who have changed what it means to be a woman in Japan: The wildly costumed Harajuku girls, the career women and entrepreneurs, the fashionistas, and the Christmas Cake girls (those who are over twenty-five and remain happily single).
With a Japanophile's appreciation for the country's social landscape and the bold changes underway, Chambers entertainingly explores the ways in which the women of Japan are morphing themselves and their nation (shattering Western stereotypes). Bold and edifying, Kickboxing Geishas is a timely and superb work of social commentary.