New Books on Japan: "From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony: Koreans and Okinawans in the Resettlement of Northeast Asia"

Friday, September 6, 2024 | 8:00-9:30 PM EDT
Saturday, September 7 | 9:00-10:30 JST | REGISTER FOR ZOOM

From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony: Koreans and Okinawans in the Resettlement of Northeast Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2023)

Author: Matthew Augustine, Associate Professor of History, Kyushu University

Discussant: Deokhyo Choi, Assistant Professor of History, University of Maryland

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Matthew Augustine (Kyushu University). Professor Augustine will be speaking about his new book, From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony: Koreans and Okinawans in the Resettlement of Northeast Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2023). From Japanese Empire to American Hegemony is the first comprehensive study of the dynamic and often contentious relationship between migrations and border controls in US-occupied Japan, Korea, and the Ryukyus, examining the American interlude in Northeast Asia as a closely integrated, regional history. The extent of cooperation and coordination among American occupiers, as well as their competing jurisdictions and interests, determined the mixed outcome of using repatriation and deportation as expedient tools for dismantling the Japanese empire. The heightening Cold War and deepening collaboration between the occupiers and local authorities coproduced stringent migration laws, generating new problems of how to distinguish South Koreans from North Koreans and “Ryukyuans” from Japanese. In occupied Japan, fears of communist infiltration and subversion merged with deep-seated discrimination, transforming erstwhile colonial subjects into “aliens” and “illegal aliens.” This transregional history explains the process by which Northeast Asia and its respective populations were remade between the fall of the Japanese empire and the rise of American hegemony. Deokhyo Choi (University of Maryland) will serve as interlocutor.