What a pleasure to read a book on such an important topic, clearly written, and not weighted down to the ground with excessive theoretical or otherwise unhelpful material! Eric Han examines the social and economic history as well as the present condition of the “Chinese” community of Yokohama. It is more than that, though, as Han also effectively provides a sociological look at what being “Chinese” means and how that has changed over the past century or more. Inasmuch as the point of entry to this community in recent decades for most of us is the many Chinese restaurants of the Chūkagai district, we need not feel guilty, for as Han demonstrates this is an intrinsic part of the community's identity, especially in the postwar period. (After all, shūmai was invented there.)

Han demonstrates that this community is not just a curiosity, an ethnic enclave in a putatively mono-ethnic society, but an important piece in modern Sino-Japanese relations and East Asian history itself. It was this group of people that welcomed Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao, among others, in the early years of the twentieth century and supported both. From the first Sino-Japanese War onwards, this community was by no means a thoroughly unified block but actually rent with fault lines and rifts. During the years of the second Sino-Japanese War, it found itself caught between a theoretical homeland overseas which was at war with the community members' country of residence, caught as it were in the crosshairs of “dual loyalties.” Han does an excellent job analyzing what might have constituted “collaboration” in this pressure-packed and difficult context. Interestingly, few members of the community faced any serious issues in the postwar era brought about by “collaboration” during it, despite the fact that some did actively support Japan—this in comparison to the much harsher trials in China.

So, with rising intermarriage (possibly at a higher rate than among Chinese in the United States) and second and third generations born in Japan, what kept this group distinct? Han shows in his long and insightful conclusion that what may have begun as a “national” identity transmogrified into an “ethnic” identity. Most recently, with the huge influx of new immigrants from the People's Republic and a twelve-fold population increase in the community between 1980 and 2007, the defining identity would now be “transnational.” Through it all, an overriding sense of rootedness in Yokohama—as hamakko (children of Yokohama)—continues to remain elemental.

As an appendix, Han includes a homegrown recipe from one of the more well-known residents and restauranteurs of Yokohama, Bao Bogong (d. 1958), for “Bokchoy pagai” (pp. 221–22). No explanation is given for why it is here—none is needed. I could swear that even the page smelled good.

One small caveat in my otherwise thorough praise for the book would run as follows. In the prewar era, ethnic Chinese in Japan faced discrimination in an assortment of ways. Han identifies some of the “creative” language used by Japanese to denigrate their immigrant neighbors, a virtually universal process faced by ethnicities around the globe. I think he may overstate the case with respect to the terms “Shina” and “Shinajin,” putatively derogatory words for “China” and “Chinese [person]” (see pp. 37, 42, 76–77, 87, 119). No doubt, these terms may have been spoken in a condescending tone of voice or from a position of power that made them seem pejorative, but I do not think they are intrinsically the case linguistically or otherwise. Many Chinese also used such terms—Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and others among them.

Han's is the first major study of a Chinese community in Japan. The Kōbe community awaits a full-fledged study. The comparison with the other longstanding East Asian community in Japan, in Yokohama and elsewhere—namely, the resident Koreans—is highly instructive. Both have been torn apart by unresolved political battles in their putative homelands ever since bloody civil wars in the early postwar era, but the comparison only goes so far. Han makes this point succinctly.