Intimate encounters : Filipina women and the remaking of rural Japan / Lieba Faier.

Intimate Encounters FILIPINA WOMEN AND THE REMAKING OF RURAL JAPAN This groundbreaking study explores the recent dramatik changes brough about in Japan by the influx of a non-Japanese population, Filipina brides, Lieba Faler investigates how Filipina women who emigrated to rural Japan to work in hostess bars-where initially they were widely disparaged as prostitutes and foreigners-came to be identified by the local residents as "ideal, traditional Japanese brides." Intimate Encounters, an ethnography of cultural encounters, unravels this paradox by examining the everyday relational dynamics that drive these interactions. The book is definitely well researched, making use of historical, theoretical and narrative sources in weaving the stories of Filipino women in Kiso. It is up-to-date in terms of the debates and contestations in the meanings, interpretations and discourses on such issues as "entertainers." How these issues are seen from the racial and gender perspectives as articulated by various actors in this wonderful "teledrama"-Filipinas, mothers-in-law, Japanese neighbors and others-is likewise tackled in this book. The author succeeds in overcoming preconceived notions of what being Filipina means and instead relies on a serious deconstruction of what "compliance and resistance" mean when Filipinas adopt/adapt to Japanese ways of life. -Aurora Javate de Dios, Professor, Women and Gender Institute, Miriam College. The book is a distinctive contribution to the understanding of the construction of identity and culture among Filipinas married to rural Japanese men. Their strategies of cultural construction and identity formation can also be extended to other Filipino women married to men of other nationalities. -Emma Porio, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University