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Hiroko Matsuda is associate professor at Kobe Gakuin University in Japan.
Crucially, Matsuda's focus extends beyond the main island of
Okinawa and the ordeals of the Battle of Okinawa, thus enriching
our perspective of this period and people's experience. . . . While
tracing their multifaceted marginalization within dominant mainland
Japan and Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, Matsuda skillfully
integrates topics such as class and gender throughout the work. The
inclusion of a wide range of supplementary materials--including
maps, photographs, tables, and advertisements--enhances the
reader's ability to imagine the macro and micro picture of the
realities and meanings of the border crossings.--Michele M. Mason,
University of Maryland-College Park "The Journal of Japanese
Studies, 46:2 (2020)"
Liminality of the Japanese Empire draws a historical retrospect
with elements familiar to ethnographic writing: colonial experience
through life histories and an overarching interethnic context.
Moreover, it dispenses with the all-too-familiar study of a generic
Okinawa in favor of a view that foregrounds the southern region of
the archipelago. . . . Arguably, the book's most telling example of
a perceptual disconnect between Okinawan and mainstream Japanese
ways is that of female hand tattooing. . . . By foregrounding the
southern cluster of islands, the Yeayamas, in Japan's interface
with the outside world, the book makes the reader acquainted with a
not often recognized contiguity, geographical and social, with a
larger Asian domain.--Arne R�kkum, University of Oslo "Asian
Ethnology, 79:1 (2020)"
The unifying theme of this history is liminality, emphasizing the
inability of binary categories to capture the status or experience
of Okinawan Japanese moving to and within Taiwan under Japanese
rule. . . . This is a valuable, accessible work illuminating a
fascinating set of interactions and reactions. The book clearly and
deliberately sits at the intersection of many current lines of
scholarly inquiry, and should be taken seriously by people working
on modern Pacific history, empires, geography, ethnicity, and
migrations.--Jonathan Dresner, Pittsburgh State University "H-Net
Reviews (H-Migration, July 2020)"
Throughout the book, Matsuda provides incredibly rich details on
the lives of Okinawans, gleaned from a wealth of memoirs, oral
histories, other documentary evidence, and her own interviews with
former residents of Taiwan. She demonstrates well the benefits of
an ethnographic approach for recovering long-ignored histories. . .
. Far from a seamless political entity, or a collectivity of
"100-million hearts beating as one," in the phrase of wartime
propaganda, modern Japan emerges from the pages of Matsuda's book
as a somewhat fragile construction during its imperial heyday, and
it is equally clear that some of those divisions remain, in the
incomplete and contested memories of that past.--Evan Dawley,
Goucher College, Baltimore "Pacific Affairs, 93:3 (September
2020)"
[The panel members] were impressed by the skilful weaving together
of analysis at different scales, from the individual to the empire;
the richness of the historical narrative that unfolds; and the
author's ability to combine oral history interviews with archival
sources in Japanese, Chinese and English.-- "Judges' comments, 2020
Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Early Career Book
Prize"
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