Etsuko Kato is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the International Christian University, Tokyo. Her research interests include nationalism, gender, and mobilities. Her publications include The Tea Ceremony and Women's Empowerment in Modern Japan and its Japanese edition, and two books on self-searching migrants (in Japanese).

This book explores "self-searching migrants", a new group of indefinitely globally mobile people whose purpose of overseas stay is the search of true self and the work they really want to do, using Japanese trans-Pacific sojourners as the case study.

Part 1: What is self-searching migration? A postmodern phenomenon 1. What is meant by self-searching? 2. Self-work identification 3. Self-searching migration in late modernity Part 2: Who are self-searching migrants? Japanese self-searching sojourners in Canada and Australia 4. True self, true work: the background stories 5. Blurring boundaries: youth and adulthood, work and holiday, sojourning and immigrating 6. Nationalism, corporate-centrism, and the immobility of Japanese men Part 3: Post-self-searching in the Pacific East? 7. "Asian" and "mobile worker": new forms of identification in Singapore Conclusion: self-searching within domestic and global power imbalances