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In the bibliographic essay of Paul Spickard's book, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group, he reflected on the historiography of Japanese American Studies in 1994:
[I]t is curious that one topic, Japanese American imprisonment in the World War II concentration camps, has commanded so much attention, that there are still so many topics left almost untouched, and that the range of theoretical perspectives among students of Japanese American history has been so limited. Clearly, there is still a great deal of work to be done.
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Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Okihiro have answered that call in this volume on transpacific Japanese American studies. Japanese American studies has long been dominated by scholarship focused on the racialization of the Japanese American community through the lens of the World War II incarceration camps in the United States and, more recently, in Canada. The transpacific characteristic of the Japanese American community, and Japanese American studies has emphasized the Issei generation and the Kibei-Nisei by U.S.-based scholars and increasingly Japan-based scholars. Takezawa and Okihiro edited a volume that expands the field of Japanese American studies by engaging in and centering on transpacific people and their communities. The authors in the book are well-known scholars from both the United States and Japan, providing a transpacific framework that includes not only the content but also the conversations between the transnational contributors.
The book discusses the questions, "Who is Japanese American?," "What is Japanese American studies?," and...