A few decades ago, if the average American was asked to conjure up a picture of Japanese women, geishas and meek war brides would most likely have come to mind. Today, however, the women of Japan wear many faces: girlish and sexy, traditional and trendy, sophisticated and punk. These women are at the forefront of a social revolution in Japan, a movement that is reinvigorating the economy and putting Japanese pop culture in the global spotlight. While Japanese men traditionally worked and pledged lifelong loyalty to Big Business, it was the women who began to travel internationally and think outside the bento box. Soon, the country's birth rate plummeted, the average age of marriage increased by five years, and Japanese teenage girls began to kick start the national economy with their joyful, trendsetting consumerism.
In 2000, journalist Veronica Chambers made her first trip to Tokyo and fell in love with the sights, fashions, and especially the people of Japan. She came to study the effects of American hip hop culture on Japan, but soon realised that Japanese culture was having a profound effect on her. Veronica became fascinated by the ways in with contemporary Japanese women -- those of her own generation -- were redefining Japanese society's traditional roles for them and coming into their own.
In 'Kickboxing Geishas', Veronica introduces readers to a wide variety of women who've changed with it means to be a female in Japan: the school girls, the career women, the fashionistas, the geishas, the housewives, and the Christmas Cake girls (those who are over the age of 25 and happily unmarried). With a Japanophile's appreciation for the country's cultural landscape and a feminist's interpretation of the girl power movement, Veronica Chambers deftly explores the myriad ways in which the women of Japan are transforming themselves and their nation.
