David R. Ambaras is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His publications include Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (2006). He has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

'Japan's Imperial Underworlds is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. David R. Ambaras reconstructs marginal lives - including those of pirates, peddlers, and child abductors - on the maritime edge of the Japanese empire. The world he evokes is unfamiliar and unforgettable; and as a framework for understanding modern Sino-Japanese relations, the book is an absolute must-read.' Martin Dusinberre, University of Zurich

• Introduction: border agents; 1. Treaty ports and traffickers: children's bodies, regional markets, and the making of national space; 2. In the Antlion's pit: abduction narratives and marriage migration between Japan and Fuqing; 3. Embodying the borderland in the Taiwan Strait: Nakamura Sueko as runaway woman and pirate Queen; 4. Borders in blood, water, and ink: Andō Sakan's intimate mappings of the South China Sea; 5. Epilogue: ruptures, returns, and re-openings.

David R. Ambaras is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His publications include Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (2006). He has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

'Japan's Imperial Underworlds is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. David R. Ambaras reconstructs marginal lives - including those of pirates, peddlers, and child abductors - on the maritime edge of the Japanese empire. The world he evokes is unfamiliar and unforgettable; and as a framework for understanding modern Sino-Japanese relations, the book is an absolute must-read.' Martin Dusinberre, University of Zurich

• Introduction: border agents; 1. Treaty ports and traffickers: children's bodies, regional markets, and the making of national space; 2. In the Antlion's pit: abduction narratives and marriage migration between Japan and Fuqing; 3. Embodying the borderland in the Taiwan Strait: Nakamura Sueko as runaway woman and pirate Queen; 4. Borders in blood, water, and ink: Andō Sakan's intimate mappings of the South China Sea; 5. Epilogue: ruptures, returns, and re-openings.

David R. Ambaras is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His publications include Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (2006). He has received fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

'Japan's Imperial Underworlds is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. David R. Ambaras reconstructs marginal lives - including those of pirates, peddlers, and child abductors - on the maritime edge of the Japanese empire. The world he evokes is unfamiliar and unforgettable; and as a framework for understanding modern Sino-Japanese relations, the book is an absolute must-read.' Martin Dusinberre, University of Zurich

• Introduction: border agents; 1. Treaty ports and traffickers: children's bodies, regional markets, and the making of national space; 2. In the Antlion's pit: abduction narratives and marriage migration between Japan and Fuqing; 3. Embodying the borderland in the Taiwan Strait: Nakamura Sueko as runaway woman and pirate Queen; 4. Borders in blood, water, and ink: Andō Sakan's intimate mappings of the South China Sea; 5. Epilogue: ruptures, returns, and re-openings.