Joy Hendry is Professor Emerita of Oxford Brookes University, UK, and has held visiting associations with Tokyo, Doshisha, and Keio universities, carried out fieldwork over 50 years, and published many books and articles on the social anthropology of Japan. A recent book An Affair with a Village (2021) tells a more personal story. In 2017, she was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government.

Emma E. Cook is Professor of Modern Japanese Studies at Hokkaido University, Japan. Previous publications include a book titled Reconstructing Adult Masculinities: Part-Time Work in Contemporary Japan (2016), an edited volume with Allison Alexy called Intimate Japan: Ethnographies of Closeness and Conflict (2018), and articles in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Asian Anthropology, and Social Science Japan Journal, among others.