The Okinawan archipelago plays a crucial role in today's rapidly changing Asia Pacific region, yet its history and contemporary significance remain insufficiently reported, debated and understood in the English-speaking world. The Translocal Island of Okinawa sheds crucial new light on Okinawan history, society and politics, and on the long struggle of Okinawan residents to protect the peace and the unique environment of their archipelago. This book also goes further, presenting an innovative perspective on the formation of identity and solidarity in grassroots movements across regional and national boundaries. Its analysis of Okinawan translocalism will be of great value to scholars of citizens' activism around the world.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita, Australian National University, Australia

Okinawa paid a heavy price for the Pacific War and for Japan's long peace after the war. Now the island takes up a vital place for East Asia's genuinely peaceable future. Takahashi tells of the islanders' struggle for this future and how in this struggle the love of the place and the ethos of grassroots internationalism come together. A remarkable achievement.

Heonik Kwon, Professor, University of Cambridge, UK

A tour-de-force into the manifold trajectories of grassroots activism based on the postwar imagination and history of the Ryukyu Arc, from Amami through Okinawa to Jeju, Taiwan, and Luzon, The Translocal Island of Okinawa explains the hearts and minds of transborder thinkers and movements in the region and rekindles the inter-Asia spirit of solidarity and resistance.

Chih-Ming Wang, Research Fellow, Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

In this well-documented, well-written account of Okinawan activism, Shinnosuke Takahashi offers readers a view of localism, historical representation of identity, and dislocation … Recommended [for] advanced undergraduates through faculty [and] professionals.

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