Invisibility by Design

“Addressing crucial issues for our time, Gabriella Lukács brings an ethnographic perspective to young Japanese women who aspire to lucrative careers in day trading and beyond. Through a writing style filled with warmth and empathy, she portrays how these women often face disappointment in their entrepreneurial endeavors, and analyzes how these women's desires for better careers can sometimes be self-defeating. A deeply insightful and thought-provoking book.” - Ian Condry, author of The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story

“Stunningly powerful, Invisibility by Design tracks the movement of young Japanese women into the digital economy where, ‘seduced’ into imagining its possibilities for meaningful work, most found instead that they labored too hard for little pay-off or gendered advancement. Indicting the capitalism that drove digital economy's rapid expansion in 2000s Japan by exploiting and invisibilizing women's affective labor, Gabriella Lukács has given us a book that is at once theoretically profound and ethnographically dense, dancing through the stories of women bloggers, net idols, 'girly' photographers, amateur traders, and cell phone novelists. A rich tour de force!” - Anne Allison, author of Precarious Japan

“This book is valuable for what it tells us about how some women, by moving into digital careers, have tried to resist the discrimination and restrictions of Japan’s gendered labor market.... It is also a welcome contribution to our understanding of how capitalism operates in the digital age.” - Kaye Broadbent, Journal of Japanese Studies

“Gabriella Lukács’s stunning new book, Invisibility by Design, examines online spaces that promise opportunities for women in particular.... Although the dynamics described within it focus on Japan, this book will be of interest to scholars working in many fields, including gender studies, labor, and communications.” - Allison Alexy, Journal of Asian Studies

“[Invisibility by Design] would be of interest to scholars of Japan but also to scholars interested in women, labor, and digital labor, and to anyone trying to understand the changing conditions of capitalism at this moment.” - Mairead Haynes, Asian Ethnology

“Invisibility by Design is a warning to any creator who aspires for a digital-based career in an era of Metaverses and Non-Fungible Tokens, but it is an especially pertinent read for historically exploited social groups such as women, people of color and queer people.” - Xanat Vargas Meza, Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia

"Lukács’s close-up on these dynamics and her critical analysis strongly contribute to the scholarship on gender, class, and work, and they add nuance to the discussion of the digital economy and cultural industries while highlighting the urgent need for media literacy in Japan’s ever-expanding digitally mediated economy." - Yuko Kawanishi, Monumenta Nipponica