Q: Dr. Janet Goodwin, what have you been up to in the last year?

A: Land, Power, and the Sacred:  The Estate System in Medieval Japan was published this summer, to the delight of all; I am collaborating with Sakurai Eiji on a chapter for the new Cambridge History of Japan, focusing on itinerant and settled merchants (Sakurai's part) and itinerant and marginalized groups (my part);  I have translated a chapter for the same volume by Yoshie Akiko, on kingship and state formation in the archipelago from the third through the early 8th century.  I spent two weeks in Japan in November, visiting such sites as the Ueno National Museum and Science Museum in Tokyo, Sanjūsangendō in Kyoto, the Kurozuka kofun and its museum in Tenri, and the Ōsu Kannonji and the science museum and planetarium in Nagoya.  Now home, I am devoting my life to my cat.