The incarceration of Japanese Americans has been discredited as a major blemish in American democratic tradition. Accompanying this view is the assumption that the ethnic group held unqualified allegiance to the United States. Between Two Empires probes the complexities of prewar Japanese America to show how Japanese in America held an in-between space between the United States and the empire of Japan, between American nationality and Japanese racial identity.

"Firmly grounded in empirical evidence and theoretically sophisticated, Between Two Empires tells the complex story of Japanese immigration into the United States within the twin contexts of Japanese and U.S. empire-building and the development of transnational identities among the immigrants themselves. Azuma's prose is fluid; his analysis is supple, nuanced, and elegant. This is an exemplary work of enduring significance." - Sucheng Chan, University of California, Santa Barbara