An Affair with a Village by Joy Hendry

Released on Monday 15th February 2021, Extremis Publishing is pleased to announce a new book by Professor Joy Hendry. In An Affair with a Village, a renowned and award-winning anthropologist relates her experiences - spanning six different decades - with the remarkable village of Kurotsuchi, providing cultural insights and observations gained during her time spent with its fascinating inhabitants.

When doctoral student Joy Hendry first visited the Japanese village of Kurotsuchi in the 1970s, little could she have known that her relationship with the community there would span several decades, leading to the formation of lifelong friendships and a connection which endures to this very day. Now a leading professor and one of the United Kingdom’s most respected experts on Japanese culture and society, Joy invites the reader to join her on a thought-provoking journey to rural Japan as she explains the painstaking work of an anthropologist in the field. Her time in Kurotsuchi offered no shortage of cultural insights and intriguing observations - to say nothing of a few surprising developments along the way! Meet the families who make up this extraordinary community, learn about their customs and social life, and share in their festivities and family celebrations as well as their times of grief. Accompany Joy as she reveals the many changes that have taken place in the village over the decades, and describes the unique bond she has forged with its remarkable citizens.

For more details about the book, including a downloadable information sheet, please visit our An Affair with a Village page on the Extremis Publishing website at https://www.extremispublishing.com/an-affair-with-a-village.html.

Professor Joy Hendry took a first degree in General Science at Kings College, London, in the heart of the swinging sixties, then travelled and worked as a teacher and a journalist in Canada and Mexico. She first sailed into Japan on a cruise ship making its way from Brazil to Yokohama Bay in the spring of 1971 to fulfil an ambition sparked by a visit to the Japanese pavilion at the 1967 EXPO in Montreal to learn the Japanese language. Joy went back to university to study social anthropology at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She went on to teach for many years at Oxford Brookes University and after retirement was made an emeritus professor. She held a readership in the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling from 1989-92. Joy also founded a global professional organisation called the Japan Anthropology Workshop and another, the Europe Japan Research Centre, largely based at Oxford Brookes, where she helped to found one of the most successful departments of Japanese in the UK. She has been president of the British Association for Japanese Studies, vice president of the European Association for Japanese Studies, and in 2017, the Government of Japan bestowed on her the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, “in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the promotion of Japanese Studies in the UK and thus to deeper mutual understanding between Japan and the United Kingdom”.

Extremis Publishing is an independent publishing house which specialises in arts, media and culture non-fiction. The company is based in Stirling, and serves readers worldwide. For further information about Extremis Publishing and its catalogue of publications, please visit the official website at www.extremispublishing.com.