Reviews Kazuo Nimura's 'The Ashio Riot of 1907: A Social History of Mining in Japan' (1997) and Yuko Ogasawara's 'Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies' (1998). Through studying the diverse subjects of male miners and female clerical workers, these two books carefully employ methodologies that borrow from Western models and successfully argue that formulaic theory must be rejected in favor of a careful consideration of historical conditions.