This book examines the lived experiences of a group of Japanese women through their thirties, revealing the dynamic of human agency responding to the social changes of Japan’s ‘lost decades’.

Exploring how these working-class women made choices and acted on them in pursuit of happiness through their thirties, the book highlights how, in so doing, they charted their various life course trajectories. Adopting a longitudinal ethnography approach, it tells the story of 18 Kobe women in real time based on their narratives at different points in time since 1989, when they were in high school. In this process, intra-class differentiation gradually emerged amongst the nontertiary-educated women with similar family backgrounds. The women maintained multiple identities based on their social roles in expanding human relationships (as mother, wife, daughter-in-law and singlehood) and gradually shifted in relative weight across these identities as they navigated their thirties.

Demonstrating the collective potential of Japanese women to resist the dominant institutional practices and social norms, this book will appeal to students and scholars of gender studies and Japanese studies, particularly Japanese culture and society.