In this book Spielvogel situates the fitness club in contemporary Japan at the intersection of globalization and consumption, of bodily discipline and display, and of constructions of health and illness. One of the many interesting questions she explores is why, despite the Japanese government’s push for increased leisure and healthier lifestyles among its citizens, members quit fitness clubs at alarming rates. During her fieldwork at three fitness clubs in the Tokyo metropolitan area--as an aerobics instructor at two clubs and as a member–observer at another--Spielvogel cast her critical eyes on political, economic, and cultural trends in Japan through her in-depth participant-observation of the fitness population. Although members at these clubs vary in gender, age, class, and nationality, the voices of young Japanese women dominate her ethnography. They are both instructors and students of aerobics, and they are avid consumers of the beauty industry, which sells cosmetics and diet aids by promising its buyers slim bodies and radiant skin.

As Spielvogel claims, “There has been little written on female participation in sport in Japan” (p. 34). In this respect, the book is a fine contribution to the anthropology of Japan, the anthropology of sports, and gender studies. In the book, young Japanese women emerge as vibrant actors who, despite being victimized by larger definitions of femininity and sexuality, often subvert them by eating or refusing to eat, drinking, and smoking. Although these women’s relations with other women, whether housewives with children or middle-aged and older women, should be explored more, Spielvogel’s book definitely complements other ethnographies of women in Japan.

The book, however, succeeds less as a contribution to globalization studies. Throughout the book, Spielvogel emphasizes that Japan and the West are not binary categories but merely ideological constructions (pp. 4, 35–39, 87–88). And yet, the members and instructors of fitness clubs largely appear in the dichotomous framework of the West (which is equipped with scientific knowledge) and Japan (which lacks it). In those parts of the book in which Spielvogel relies on “Japan” and “the West,” she appears more as a “scientific” aerobics instructor from the West rather than as an anthropologist, thereby invoking the very dichotomy she refutes. Statements like, “In Japan, the central aim of exercise is to sweat as a personal release from stress” (p. 83) are reminiscent of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, published in 1946, in which Ruth Benedict treats physical pleasures in Japan as an opposite concept to self-sacrificing duty. I believe that the notion of “exercise” in contemporary Japan has gone through radical changes since then.

Spielvogel notes that nearly 40 percent of members of the fitness club in the Roppongi district in downtown Tokyo are foreigners (p. 155). They work in the investment banks, modeling agencies, and embassies located nearby, as well as in the hostess bars and strip clubs. They are from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Israel, Europe, and Mexico and plan to stay in Japan for only a few months or a year at most. It is a great pity that, in Spielvogel’s book, these foreigners never speak. How do they associate themselves with Japanese fitness club members? How do Japanese women see them? How do they work together in the fitness clubs? What I wish to see are ethnographic descriptions of these scenes, in which Spielvogel portrays herself as one of the many agents of globalization in contemporary Japan. By relating the voices of “foreigners” to the voices of Japanese women and men at fitness clubs, Spielvogel could have achieved a great deal more than she does. In terms of theory, then, although Spielvogel utilizes the notion of “situated knowledge” quite effectively in her book, I wonder whether she also needs another powerful weapon of feminist theory--the politics of location. The diverse populations of contemporary Japan--particularly Tokyo--do not necessarily come to the fitness clubs from the location Spielvogel calls “the West.” Rather, they come from various places in the world and represent different genders, classes, and positions. And yet they all contribute to the formation of notions of health and illness in Japan. By utilizing the politics of location effectively, Spielvogel could have liberated “the Japanese women” from the rigid divide of East and West that still dominates anthropology of Japan.