Designing Modern Japan, an extensively researched peer-reviewed monograph, weaves together the personal stories of people who shaped and shape Japan’s design industries with social history, economic conditions and geopolitics. Japan’s extensive and sophisticated industries and cultures have been internationalized for several hunded years, incorporating foreign design trends and technologies and exporting products to far-flung consumers. They respond ably to and in many cases have created highly segmented markets at home. The story of the systems and products designers created as old markets shifted and disappeared is part of a much larger story about design within the global movement of capital, knowledge and people. Precisely how people in Japan who cared about design responded to these opportunities and changing conditions, however, is a very local story, as is the impact of gender, class and geography on how people experienced and accessed design. This book aims to articulate what they did, how and why they did it, and some of the results of those actions.