Layered Sovereignties and Contested Seas: Recent Histories of Maritime Japan. Maiden Voyage: The Senzaimaru and the Creation of Modern Sino-Japanese Relations. By Joshua Fogel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. 301 pp. ISBN: 9780520283305 (cloth, also available as e-book). Empires on the Waterfront: Japan's Ports and Power, 1858–1899. By Catherine L. Phipps. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015. 308 pp. ISBN: 9780674417168 (cloth). Lords of the Sea: Pirates, Violence, and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan. By Peter D. Shapinsky. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. xiii, 327 pp. ISBN: 9781929280803 (cloth, also available in paper). Defensive Positions: The Politics of Maritime Security in Tokugawa Japan. By Noell Wilson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015. xiii, 244 pp. ISBN: 9780674504349 (cloth).