The idea that Japan is a socially homogenous, uniform society has been increasingly challenged in recent years. This book takes the resulting view further by highlighting how Japan, far from singular or monolithic, is socially and culturally complex.

1. Introduction: Escaping Japan Inside and Out2. Maid Cafés: Affect, Life and Escape in Akihabara3. The Burden of Sobriety: Alcoholism and Masculinity in Japan4. Robot Dreams: Play, Escape and Masculine-Romanticism in Japanese Techno-Culture5. The Globalization of Melancholic Affect: Escaping Soft Power through the Literature of Murakami Haruki6. Escaping through Words: Memory and Oblivion in the Japanese Urban Landscape7. ‘Escaping’ the Hokkaido Homelands: Ainu Heteroglossia and the Performance of Ainu Urban Indigeneity in the Kantō Region8. Kyoko’s Assemblage: Escaping ‘futsū no nihonjin’ in Hokkaido9. ‘Escape’ to a Place of Familiarity: Transforming Japanese Tourist Imaginings of Taiwan10. Fleeing from Constraints: Japanese Retirement Migrants in Malaysia11. After Words, Tien-Shi ‘Lara’ Chen, Blai Guarné, Paul Hansen, Susanne Klien