"This book is a presentation of her continuing work on Japanese families and provides insightful, intellectual and indigenous sociological documents. This book will prove to be a valued contribution to family studies in the East Asian region." --Chin-chun Yi, Professor and Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academic Sinica, Taiwan "Professor Kumagai's new book provides various new insights into Japan's changing family organization of the past few decades. The book also sheds light on such key policy issues in twenty-first century Japan as to how and in what direction the Japanese family will be shifting in the process of unprecedented population aging. This book is a must for Japan specialists as well as those interested in Japanese studies!" --Naohiro Ogawa, Professor of Economics, Nihon University Advanced Research Institute for Sciences and Humanities (ARISH), and Director, Nihon Un "This book is an excellent contribution to the understanding of changes in the Japanese family from the Japanese perspective." --Stella R. Quah, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore "Professor Kumagai is eminently qualified to elucidate the considerable knowledge of families from a comparative perspective in her various publications. I am very confident that her new book will give a distinct view of the changing Japanese family.

This book will be of great interest not only to Asian scholars, but also to other specialists in comparative family studies around the world." --Dr. George Kurian, Editor, Journal of Comparative Family Studies "Fumie Kumagai's new book on families in Japan will open up to the wider world the fascinating dynamics of Japanese family life in a rapidly globalizing Information Age, in which local practice is intertwined in a complex way with global pressures. This new book builds powerfully upon her earlier work by taking the reader deep inside an institution normally hidden to non-Japanese eyes and revealing its rich regional variety." --Dennis Smith, professor of sociology, Loughborough University, and editor of Current Sociology.