The Kuroshio Frontier

'The Kuroshio Frontier boldly traverses established geographic, intellectual, and historiographical categories and conventions about early modern and modern Japan. Adroitly interweaving individual, local, and national narratives – while simultaneously expounding on relevant global economic and environmental trends – Rüegg convincingly shows the importance of viewing the Japanese past through not only an oceanic gaze but also as part of larger currents of Pacific history.' Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University

'The Kuroshio Frontier is a wonderful addition to the growing body of research which reconsiders Japanese history from an oceanic perspective. Meticulously researched and full of fascinating insights, this book sheds important new light on the ways in which the fluid ocean frontier shaped the emergence of modern Japan.' Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita, Australian National University

'By immersing nineteenth-century Japan within Pacific Ocean history, Rüegg reveals the currents connecting subaltern actors on watery frontiers. His innovative approach blurs the divide between the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, combines political and ecological history, and provides a refreshing way of seeing Japan as a part of global history.' Julia Adeney Thomas, author of Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right

'With The Kuroshio Frontier, Rüegg brilliantly recasts Japan's expansion as a story of oceanic entanglements, resource frontiers, and transregional actors too often left out of conventional narratives. This book exemplifies the best of recent Anglophone scholarship that situates Japan, and its archipelago, firmly within the Pacific World.' Jun Uchida, author of Provincializing Empire: Ōmi Merchants in the Japanese Transpacific Diaspora