Arne Røkkum is a professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Ethnography, University Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. He has conducted fieldwork among the Izu and Ryukyu islanders of Japan and among the Bunun and Yami of Taiwan. He is the author of Goddesses, Priestesses and Sisters: Mind Gender and Power in the Monarchic Tradition of the Ryukyus (Scandinavian University Press, 1998).

• Introduction 1. Commuted Landscapes and Species 2. Person and Island 3. Cyclical Lapses 4. Fateful Exchanges. Conclusion

'Arne Røkkum has produced a complex, nuanced, and carefully argued ethnography on nature, ritual, society, and symbolism in the Ryukyu Islands, specifically, in this case, Yonaguni Island...There are some wonderful vignettes in this ethnography and some well-constructed analytical frames of reference...it is informative, well researched, and exposes a level of detailed observation and analysis rarely found in the English-language literature on the Ryukyus.' - Matthew Allen, Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 33