The location of the nation-state, or which territories are part of “our homeland” and which are not, is socially constructed and given to changes and fluctuations. Often, such shifting stances of territorial possessions stem more from domestic politics than from international ones. Yet most works on the subject focus on governments that are using territorial issues as a powerful tool to garner domestic support and legitimacy.

These Islands Are Ours shows a different, almost opposite, dynamic. It argues that in some cases, “national identity entrepreneurs” use territorial issues as instruments against the national government to achieve goals that are essentially domestic. Such dynamics are not restricted to Northeast Asia. Think, for example, of the settlement movement in Israel, lobbying the government to expand its territorial vision and setting “facts on the ground” to make withdrawal harder. This book is perhaps the most coherent and broad theoretical articulation of such a phenomenon.

In this meticulously researched and well-argued work, Alexander Bukh investigates four cases of territorial national identity entrepreneurs in Northeast Asia: the campaign to regain the “Northern Territories” (Russia’s Kuril Islands) in Japan; the attempt by civil society and local government to promote