This module elucidates the construction of border/boundary that demarcates "the metropole"and the "colony" of the Japanese colonial empire. This particularly focuses on the border/boundary between Okinawa/ the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan with a particular attention to individuals who travels around Yaeyama Archipelago.

Yaeyama Archipelago, which formed part of the Ryukyu Kingdom from the sixteenth century, was formally annexed to Japan in 1879. After Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895, it became not only the border that separated the colonized and the colonizer countries.

The boundary between Japan (the metropole) and Taiwan (the colony) was not instantly determined by the governmental treaty, but constantly negotiated by people who travelled across the border zone. This module demonstrates that people of Japan and Okinawa were active agencies of the Japanese colonial empire, and their discourse and practices of nationalism were incorporated into the colonialism.