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frebce the cover of this book, Takahashi Hiroaki's Twilight, "highlights the ideological emphasis on the virtues of the traditional countryside in opposition to the urban, industrial society" (Dartnall 1996, 80). Yet, this depiction represents only half of the Story I will tell here. ill this woodblock print, a rural woman is shown as part of a namral and a nationallanclscape (note the Shinto shrine, a symbol ofJapanese nationalism in the 19305, in the background). In my Story, she is an exhausted woman trying to survive her days. Since the time of my first stint of fieldwork in 1984, more than ten years have passed. I have incurred so many debts during these years that I may miss the names of some of those who contributed to the completion of this book in one way or another. 1 extend my thanks and apologies to them first. While working on this book, I have had fruitful engagements with intellectual communities in Tokyo, Chicago, Iowa City, and Los Angeles. In Tokyo, my former teachers were always there whenever I needed their help and support. In Chicago, Norma Field always listened to me despite her busy schedule, and later she read the entire manuscript for this book. In Iowa City, Margery Wolf was a mentor in the area of women's studies , and Stephen Vlastos gave me precious comments on my research and writing. In Los Angeles, Francesca Bray read the first version of my manuscript and offered many valuable comments. Leslie Pincus, Miriam Silverberg, and Karen Brodkin were my best intellectual companions. The members of the Center for Japanese Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, gave me their utmost suppOrt. I am also grateful to Robert J. Smith, and Patricia Tsurumi, who kindly shared her unpublished paper with me, and Kendall Brown, who found the woodblock print Twilight for the cover of this book. My graduate research assistants, Brenda Jenike Robb, Haeng-ja Chung, Jennifer Reynolds, Mayumi Yamamoto, William Horton, and James Jo helped me at various stages in preparing this manuscript. '" " Frefac;e Patricia Crosby at the University of Hawai'i Press has earned my unending gratitude for her help and courtesy from the beginning to the completion of the publication of this book. My thanks also go to Susan Stone, who painstakingly edited my manuscript and remarkably improved the quality of my writing. I am also grateful for the help ofanonymous reviewers, who shared their insights with me, and of Cheri Dunn and Masako Ikeda, who oversaw the production of this book. An earlier version of Chapter 3 was published as "Songs as Weapons: Culture and History of Komori (Nursemaids) in Modem Japan," in The Journal ofAsian Studies 1991, 50 (4): 793-817, and a slightly different version of Chapter 5 appeared as "Gender, Nationalism, andJapanese Native Ethnology," in Positio1JS 1996,4 (1): 59-86. A different version of Chapter 6 will appear as "The City and the Countryside: Competing Taisho 'Modernities' on Gender," in a book edited by Sharon A. Minichiello,Japalls Competing Modernities: Issues in CulNlre and Democracy, 1900-1930, to be published by the University of Hawai'i Press in 1998. Support for the research and writing of this book was made possible by grants from the Joint Committee onJapanese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Japan·U.S. Friendship Commission, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; the United Nations University in Tokyo; the University of Iowa; the North East Asia Council; and the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles. I am grateful also for the help afforded me by Shinano Kyoiku-kai in the city of Nagano, Veda Rekishi HaL.'UbutsUkan and Uraz.ato $onpi> FukkokuJikkolinkai in lagano, Ie no Hikari Kyokai in Tokyo, and Josei shiryo Bunka KenkyUjo of the Ochanomizu Women's University in Tokyo. The University of California Presidential Fellowships in Humanities made it possible for me to take adequate leave time from teaching in 1997, when the final revisions for this book were completed. My thanks also go to Kuki Yoko of the East Asian Library of the University of Chicago and the wonderful group of librarians at the East Asia Collection of the University of California, Los Angeles, Research Library. My Ph.D. dissertation, which I completed in 1982, was about Catalonian nationalism in Spain and France. Since then I have traveled a great distance, both geographically, from Europe...

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