Bardsley Jan - Manners and mischief gender, power, and etiquette in Japan

Was it manners or mischief that got us started on this project? Probably a little of both. Ideas for the book began percolating in the fall of 2005. Wed had afternoon high tea at the Drake Hotel with our good friend Laura Hein and her two lovely daughters, Cora and Vinca. Although it was early November, the weather in Chicago was crisp and clear, and we enjoyed the time we spent walking around downtown. Back in our room on the concierge level of the Palmer House, we were snug in big, white fluffy robes, making margaritas in the water glasses, and watching the maza-kon TV drama that Laura had brought, Maza $$ Rabua: Maza-kon de nani ga warui?! (2004) (Mother and lover: Whats so bad about a mother complex?!). Our first edited volume, Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005), was about to debut. Friends were already kidding us about whether or not there would be a sequel, Worse Girls of Japan or Really Bad Girls of Japan. Or, what if we did a complete turnabout, reformed, and produced Good Girls of Japan? Thinking about what a volume on good girls would look like brought us to etiquette manuals and manners guides, a topic both of us had already been working on for some time. Talking about various Japanese guides, recalling movies and TV shows, and remembering our own faux pas in Japan quickly made us realize that this book on manners was going to involve lots of mischief as well.

We thank Reed Malcolm at the University of California Press for being such a fantastic, supportive editor. Although it took us longer than expected to get this volume gloved, hatted, and ready to debut, were happy to say that shes ready to go out into the world now, thanks to his encouragement.

We are grateful to our colleagues for contributing these fine chapters. Their friendship and writerly manners, and even the bits of mischief they added to make this project more fun, are all much appreciated. For sticking with us and for doing even that last round of revisions with good humor, we thank Hideko Abe, Gavin James Campbell, Linda H. Chance, Kelly M. Foreman, Sally A. Hastings, Hiroko Hirakawa, Maki Isaka, Amanda C. Seaman, and Janet Shibamoto-Smith. We appreciate the support for this project offered by Rebecca Copeland, Liza Dalby, and William Tsutsui.

We would like to thank the following for kindly giving permission to use images: Kumagai Hiroshi, a senior editor at H & I Kenkyujo; Mimura Keisuke, a senior editor at Shufu to Seikatsu-sha; Hibino Reiko, an editorial administrator at JTB Publishing; Kurata Akihiro, a senior editor at Shobunsha Publishing; and Daiwa Shobo. We made every effort to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint images in the final chapter. The editors would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not herein acknowledged and promise to rectify any errors or omissions in proper credit in future editions of the book. We also thank Margaret Price for help with organizing the image permission letters. We thank the editors of the