Contributor: Hiroko Matsuda Hiroko Matsuda is associate professor at Kobe Gakuin University in Japan.

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. --- 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. --- [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. --- 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. --- 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.