Introduction : modern girls in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries : cultural meanings of gender, mobility, and labor -- Moving up and out : the "shop girl" in interwar Japan / Elise K. Tipton -- Elevator girls moving in and out of the box / Laura Miller -- Sweat, perfume, and tobacco : the ambivalent labor of the dance hall girl / Vera Mackie -- "Flying geisha" : Japanese stewardesses with Pan American World Airways / Christine R. Yano -- Bus guides tour national landscapes, pop culture, and youth fantasies / Alisa Freedman -- The modern girl as militarist : female soldiers in and beyond Japan's self-defense forces / Sabine Frühstück -- The promises and possibilities of the pitch : 1990s Ladies League soccer players as fin de siècle modern girls / Elise Edwards -- Miss Japan on the global stage : the journey of Ito Kinuko / Jan Bardsley -- Traveling to learn, learning to lead : Japanese women as American college students, 1900-1941 / Sally A. Hastings -- A personal journey across the Pacific / Yoko McClain.