""Dancing with the Dead" is a beautifully written, deeply evocative, and smartly argued book about the ways in which the past intrudes into the present and how memory is given shape, recognition, and vigor through storytelling of various forms. This will be an important book not only for and about Okinawan history but also about the times of continued violence and militarism in which we live."--Anne Allison, author of "Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination"

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Battlefield of Memory 1
1. Fujiki Hayato: The Storyteller 27
2. The Heritage of His Times: Teruya Rinsuke and Ethnographic Storytelling 58
3. The Classroom of the Everyday: Fujiki Hayato and His "Shima to Asobimanabu" Seminar 89
4. In a Samurai Village 126
5. Dances of Memory, Dances of Oblivion 171
Conclusion: In the Darkness of the Lived Moment 215
Notes 221
Bibliography 253
Index 263

Christopher T. Nelson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.