A specialist on contemporary Japanese society and culture, Prof. Bestor has focused much of his research on Tokyo. He has written widely on urban culture and history, markets and economic organization, food culture, the fishing industry, and popular culture. His current work is focused on globalization, consumption, and identity.

Prof. Bestor is the author of Neighborhood Tokyo (1989); Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World (2004); Global Sushi: Commodity, Environment, and Consumption in the Transnational Tuna Trade (in preparation); and editor, with Patricia Steinhoff and Victoria Lyon Bestor, of Doing Fieldwork in Japan (2003).

Prof. Hardacre's main research interest is Japanese religious history of the modern period. She has completed extended field studies of contemporary Shinto and Buddhist religious organizations; the religious life of Japan's Korean minority; and state Shinto and contemporary ritualizations of abortion.

A recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Prof. Hardacre has written and edited numerous books, including: The Religion of Japan's Korean Minority: The Preservation of Ethnic Identity (1984); Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan: Reiyukai Kyodan (1984); Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan (1986); Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 (1989); Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia (1994); Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan (1997); and Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Japan: A Study of the Southern Kanto Region, Using Late Edo and Early Meiji Gazetteers (2002).