Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2019


Friendship and Work Culture of Women Managers in Japan: Tokyo After Ten


Swee-Lin Ho, National University of Singapore (NUS)


19:10-20:40, May 30th, 2019

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University


This book, published in 2018 by Routledge, in The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series, draws on ethnographic data gathered from fieldwork spanning a 15-year period, and offers new insights into understanding the ambivalent lives and experiences of women managers in Japan.


Based on empirical case studies, it explores the ways in which professional women in Tokyo creatively mobilize their friend- ships as a strategic site for mitigating the disappointments in their working lives, and conceptualizing new understandings of independence and equality.


It analyses their use of language, time, space and money to negotiate new identities in an increasingly flexible work environment.


In examining the challenges and opportunities faced by these corporate workers, this book also extends anthropological debates about the changing meaning and importance of work for women, as well as their relationship with money and separation from the realm of domesticity.


Swee-Lin Ho is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology of the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to that, she was a Korea Foundation Research Fellow, and Assistant Professor in the School of International Studies at The Catholic University of Korea.


Her research and publications include ethnographic studies on love hotels in Japan; Japanese women's extramarital experiences; friendship and drinking practices of women managers in Tokyo; Japan's changing urban nightscape; the consumption and production processes of The Korean Wave in South Korea and Japan; and the conflicted desires of parents in South Korea in grooming their children to become global K-pop stars. Swee's latest research is on the neoliberal transformations of work and shifting self-identities among young Asians pursuing professional careers in the global classical music industry.


Her next book Women Managers in Neo-Liberal Japan: Gender, Precarious Labour and Everyday Lives is expected to be published in 2020 by Routledge, in The Japan Anthropological Workshop Series.


This talk is organized by Professor David H. SLATER (FLA)

Lecture in English / No RSVP required


Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) Sophia University

7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN

Web: http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/