Ever since Japan and the West discovered one another, Western observers have extolled the surface virtues of Japanese women but attended very little to what they are really like. In this new, balanced view of the role of Japanese women in their country's swiftly changing society, The Hidden Sun: Women of Modern Japan destroys the Western stereotype of the shy, perhaps slightly coquettish, doll-like figure and replaces it with a sober, realistic portrait of a woman whose attitudes and activities influence the policies and trends of modern Japan, both domestically and internationally.