The anthropological study of neoliberal Japan is booming, mirroring similar trends in the broader discipline and academe. This literature has been on the rise for over a decade now, expounding the impacts of economic restructuring on the inner and social lives of Japanese people. The resulting accounts indicate that the ripples of neoliberal policies are everywhere: in the exacerbation of precarity and inequality;Footnote ¹ in the idiom of self-development in education;Footnote ² in the commodified romance at host clubs;Footnote ³ in the unpaid labor of young women in the digital economy;Footnote ⁴ and in the shifting values among company employees.Footnote ⁵ The spate of such monographs may well solidify a new subfield in the study of contemporary Japan that draws on neoliberalism as the conceptual linchpin between the economic, the ethical, and the intimate.

Intimate Disconnections makes a valuable contribution to this vibrant body of inquiry by focusing on an understudied topic: divorce. How do people connect and disconnect with one another when neoliberal policies laud individualism and self-realization—values that can be freeing and isolating at once (pp. 12–13)? Allison Alexy astutely embeds divorce within Japan's “intimate political economy,” which connects “employment structures, tax systems, and gendered hiring practices with the conditions of possibility for intimate relationships” (p. 37). Her analyses are exemplary of anthropological sensitivity in that they consistently interlace the micro with the macro, the emotive with the economic, and the personal with the political. Although Alexy's main fieldwork took place some time ago in the mid-2000s (p. 22), the findings remain relevant and compelling. Given the reluctance of many Japanese—especially older men—to talk openly about divorce (pp. 158–61, 171–74), the ethnography's richness is an impressive feat.

Part one details how the restructured labor market reshaped marital norms. For decades after World War II, the dominant model of intimacy in Japan was “disconnected dependence” (p. 36), an emotionally distant and yet pragmatically inseparable union of housewife and salaryman (corporate employee). In the last two decades, however, this heteronormative standard has come under increasing criticism, giving way to a competing vision of intimacy that Alexy terms “connected independence” (p. 62). Now it is acceptable, even normal, to seek a marriage based on “companionate romance” between spouses who are supposedly best friends (p. 66). The central importance accorded to emotional authenticity, in turn, informs the narrative of divorcing “to regain a lost sense of self” (p. 78), which points to a static view of the self on the rise in Japan today (p. 80).

Part two focuses on the actual process of divorce and its messy ramifications. Divorce is never as neat as it may appear. For example, the high ratio of “uncontested” (kyōgi) divorce—87.6 percent in 2015 (p. 85)—does not mean that most spouses reach a smooth agreement on the matter. On the contrary, tough negotiations likely take place in private, outside legal venues—a manifestation of “family law exceptionalism” (p. 106). Thus, “eventual mutuality masks substantial private conflict and negotiation” (p. 86). Similarly, the ideal of “clean break” in custody decisions does not mean that children's experiences are straightforward. Since joint custody is legally nonexistent in Japan, many children end up losing contact with their noncustodial parents, especially fathers. Consequently, “policies that advocate or support a ‘clean break’ leave children vulnerable to loss and longing that are largely ignored within the court system” (p. 121).

Part three uncovers the costs of divorce and hopes for new connections. Alexy debunks the widespread attribution of increasing divorce to female empowerment by pointing out the persistent disadvantage that women still face in Japanese society (pp. 136–37). In reality, almost 40 percent of single mothers live in relative poverty because of the systemic lack of opportunities in the gendered job market and the court's lack of power to guarantee child support transfers (pp. 150–52). Yet divorce does not just bring misery but also fledgling friendships—what Alexy calls “bonds of disconnection” (p. 156). In formal therapeutic spaces and informal get-togethers, the divorcing and the divorced can connect by sharing their experiences of disconnection. Although men find it more difficult to depend on such gatherings (p. 175), the bonds of disconnection may form a notable counterforce against “a society without bonds (muen shakai)” (p. 157).

I have one question about the evolution of Alexy's thoughts on neoliberalism. In one section (pp. 9–14), she describes her initial reactions full of skepticism to this concept: “a popular, if slippery, category of analysis” (p. 10) and a “lazy way” to “group together any number of heterogeneous things” (Cahill and Konings,Footnote ⁶ quoted on p. 14). She also admits that she was “frustrated” at the time because scholars seemingly used it “in almost any project, using it as a declarative answer rather than a provocative and genuine question” (p. 14). Given Alexy's own strong reservations, which I partly share, I would have liked a more detailed explanation of how exactly neoliberalism came to redeem itself as an operational and precise conceptual tool before she decided to adopt it throughout this book. Such an account could also be valuable to the ever-expanding literature on neoliberalism.

Intimate Disconnections is an accessible and enjoyable book, which I recommend to undergraduate students, graduate scholars, and researchers in Japan studies, Asian studies, gender studies, and anthropology. I especially enjoyed the intellectual vigor with which Alexy busts the widespread stereotypes about divorce in Japan by vetting common perceptions against her empirical findings. This is a laudable work of real scholarship.