Based on research over a six-year period into three age groups of women, this important new study offers in depth analysis for the first time of the experience of expatriate Japanese wives living temporarily in the United Kingdom. It focuses on the roles of the 'housewife'in the context of the changing status of women in contemporary Japan.

Ruth Martin is a Research Associate of the Europe-Japan Research Centre at Oxford Brookes University where she recently completed her PhD thesis on Japanese expatriate wives in the UK. Her interests lie in gender and migration, and she continues with fieldwork that will enable her to follow up her Japanese informants and their children in the long term.