Okinawa, a chain of small islands located in the western Pacific Rim, is undoubtedly one of the foremost victims of the brutality of modernity. Once an independent kingdom, Okinawa was annexed by Imperial Japan in the late nineteenth century, suffered one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, and was subsequently put under U.S. military administration for twenty-seven years. Despite its reversion to Japanese control nearly forty years ago, about 20 percent of the land area of the main island of Okinawa remains occupied by U.S. military bases. How have Okinawans confronted continuous violence in their everyday lives and carved out futures while bearing the burdens of the past? With few exceptions, this question has been rarely discussed in cultural anthropology and its sister disciplines such as sociology, history, and cultural studies. In his first full-length work, Christopher T. Nelson examines this critical question with the perspective of his long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Okinawa, especially in Okinawa city, the second largest in Okinawa, whose postwar economy and population expanded dramatically as a result of the construction and deployment of U.S. military bases in the area.

Nelson's work developed from one of the best parts of thorough participant-observation: unexpected encounters and deep engagement with intriguing cultural practices. He first became engaged in the above question when he visited Okinawa as a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. Planning to write an ethnography of land ownership, governance, and cultural transformation in modern Okinawa, Nelson returned as an anthropologist, and during his fieldwork unexpectedly encountered rich cultural performances such as story-telling and eisā—the traditional dance for the dead—that had attracted little scholarly attention.

In a sense, this book can be considered an extensive commentary on the possibilities and limits of specific Okinawan cultural practices to confront the question of violence in Okinawa. While these cultural practices are sometimes regarded as a retreat from the burdens of the modern world, Nelson's monograph demonstrates through a wealth of anecdotal detail that they are actually collaborative efforts to come to grips with the burdens of the past. They involve not only Okinawan performers but also audiences that include Japanese tourists and U.S. service persons. Okinawans turn these creative practices into critical resources for thinking through Okinawa's past, present, and future, engendering moments of creativity and expression as well as “a space to think about things” (p. 215).

Although there are some errors in his description—for example, Japan has forty-seven prefectures, not eighty-three (p. 14)—Nelson's book is well researched, original, thought-provoking, and elegantly written, and will provide English readers with insight into little-known aspects of contemporary Okinawan social and cultural life. The book speaks not only to the past and present of Okinawa, but also more generally to the poetics and politics of memory and cultural performance across geographical boundaries.