| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 251 words from this article are provided below; about 520 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Gregory Smits. Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early-Modern Thought and Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 1999. Pp. 213. $47.00.

The history of the Ryukyu as a quasi-independent state with a semicolonial status vis-à-vis shogunal Japan via the Satsuma domain, whose military presence was carefully kept out of view from China (with which Ryukyu had a tributary relationship), that Gregory Smits presents us in this excellent study is chronologically framed by 1609, when Satsuma invaded the kingdom and whisked its king off to Japan for two years, and 1879, when it was annexed to Japan but in fact became Japan's first colony. Well armed with Prasenjit Duara's insights in the narrative historical forms in which premodern "nations" can be cast (a refinement of Benedict Anderson's theories of "imagined communities"), Smith explores the various ways in which the tension resulting from the ambiguous political status of Ryukyu with China, fountainhead of culture and grantor of investiture to its kings, and with Satsuma, militarily dominant and economically indispensable, was translated into Ryukyu politics and visions of identity, always unstable, precarious, adjustable, and contestable. This balanced and well-documented study is a fine example of a new area of Japanese history that has recently opened up, where the themes of marginality, colonialism, the history of representations, and relevant new theories come together. Along the way, Smits presents us with an interesting variety of Confucianism in thought and action in a "borderland" situation hitherto unexplored in Western scholarship. . . .

There are about 520 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.