ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals how a young woman, Kanako, accumulated social roles and multiple identities deriving from the social roles (e.g., carefree student, fulltime worker, mother) as she navigated life in her late teens and 20’s, in making decisions, acting on them and interacting with other people. It suggests that her sense of each of these identities changed in terms of intensity, urgency and significance over time; as she prioritized her multiple identities in relation to elements of social structure (e.g., class, gender, ethnicity), domains of daily life (e.g., workplace, natal home) and specific situations at a given time.
