1. Women – Japan – Social conditions 2. Women – Philippines – Social conditions 3. Women – Japan – History 4. Women domestics – Japan 5. Women alien labor – Japan 6. Alien labor, Philippines – Japan This groundbreaking study explores the recent dramatic changes brought about in Japan by the influx of a non-Japanese population, Filipina brides, Lieba Faier investigates how Filipina women who emigrated to rural Japan to work in hostess bars – where initially they were widely disparaged as prostitutes and foreigners – came to be identified by the local residents as “deal, traditional Japanese brides.” Intimate Encounters, an ethnography of cultural encounters, unravels this paradox by examining the everyday relational dynamics that drive these interactions.