This study examines Okinawa's relationship with the Japanese nation-state from 1879 to 2000 through the lens of cultural heritage. It also analyzes how the Japanese state and American occupation authorities have used heritage to govern Okinawa, and how Okinawans use it to negotiate, resist, and contest Japanese and American impositions of power.

This book is a collection of interwoven historical narratives that present an intriguing and little known account of the Ogasawara (Bonin) archipelago and its inhabitants. The narratives begin in the seventeenth century and weave their way through various events connected to the ambitions, hopes, and machinations of individuals, communities, and nations. At the center of these narratives are the Bonin Islanders, originally an eclectic mix of Pacific Islanders, Americans, British, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and African settlers that first landed on the islands in 1830. The islands...

Radhabinod Pal was an Indian jurist who achieved international fame as the judge representing India at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and dissented from the majority opinion, holding that all Japanese "Class A" war criminals were not guilty of any of the charges brought against them. In postwar Japanese politics, right-wing polemicists have repeatedly utilized his dissenting judgment in their political propaganda aimed at refuting the Tokyo trial's majority judgment and justifying Japan's aggression, gradually elevating this controversial lawyer from India to a national symbol of historical...

On October 26, 1909, the Korean patriot An Chunggŭn assassinated the Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi in Harbin, China. More than a century later, the ramifications of An's daring act continue to reverberate across East Asia and beyond. This volume explores the abiding significance of An, his life, and his written work, most notably On Peace in the East (Tongyang p'yŏnghwaron), from a variety of perspectives, especially historical, legal, literary, philosophical, and political. The ways in which An has been understood and interpreted by contemporaries, by later generations, and...

Focusing on regional geopolitics, social dynamics, watershed political rituals, and family narratives, this book explores the cultural process of moving from enmity to engagement amidst the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War following the Inter-Korean Summit of June 2000.

The book explores, in interview format, issues raised but not fully explored by Scott's poem Coming to Jakarta on the 1965 Indonesian massacre. In addition, Scott reflects on ways that poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our "second nature."