Three decades after living in Okinawa, where h e was stationed with the Army in the late ’60s, Steve Rabson returned for research. His two-year study resulted in The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan, Crossing the Borders Within, the first English-language book on the topic. It examines the struggles of Okinawans who emigrated from the North Pacific islanbd to mainland Japan and to minorities there; how this phenomenon was influenced by government regulations, corporate policies, and popular attitudes; and Japan’s more recent struggle to accept its citizens’ multi-ethnicity.
While living in Osaka from 1999 to 2001, Rabson explored essential sources, conducted dozens of interviews, administered hundreds of questionnaires, and gleaned information from conversations over coffee with neighbors.
Christopher Nelson, associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote of the book, “Readers will find themselves immersed in the experiences of discrimination and betrayal, extermination and neglect, hope and assimilation.”
Rabson is professor emeritus of East Asian studies at Brown University. He studied Japanese language and literature, earning a master’s degree from Sophia University in Tokyo and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Published by University of Hawai‘i Press, November 2011