Rethinking Postwar Okinawa Beyond American Occupation

Rethinking
Postwar Okinawa
Rethinking
Postwar Okinawa
Beyond American Occupation
Edited by
Pedro Iacobelli and Hiroko Matsuda
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Matsuda, Hiroko, 1976- editor of compilation. | Iacobelli, Pedro,
editor of compilation.
Title: Rethinking postwar Okinawa : beyond American occupation / edited by
Hiroko Matsuda and Pedro Iacobelli.
Description: Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017050060 (print) | LCCN 2017043360 (ebook) | ISBN
9781498533126 (electronic) | ISBN 9781498533119 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Okinawa-ken (Japan)—History. | Japan—History—Allied
occupation, 1945-1952. | Okinawa-ken (Japan)—Politics and government.
Classification: LCC DS894.99.O3785 (print) | LCC DS894.99.O3785 R47 2017
(ebook) | DDC 952/.29404—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050060
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Contents
Introduction: Rethinking Postwar Okinawa
Hiroko Matsuda and Pedro Iacobelli
1 History as a Mirror of Self: A Note on Postwar
Okinawan Historiography
Hidekazu Sensui
vii
1
2 Nursing the U.S. Occupation: Okinawan Public Health Nurses
in U.S.-Occupied Okinawa
Asako Masubuchi
21
3 The Occupying Other: Third-Country Nationals and the U.S.
Bases in Okinawa
Johanna O. Zulueta
39
4 Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
Ryan Masaaki Yokota
5 Beyond Minority History: Okinawa Korea People’s Solidarity
and Internationalization of the Okinawa Struggle
Shinnosuke Takahashi
59
81
6 Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity: Race, Class
and Transnationalism in Okinawa and Japan
Ayako Takamori
103
7
121
hampurū Text: Decolonial Okinawan Writing
C
Ariko S. Ikehara
v
vi
Contents
8 The Black Pacific through Okinawan Eyes: Photographer Mao
Ishikawa’s “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” and “Life in Philly”
Laura Kina
149
Bibliography
169
Index
185
About the Editors and Contributors
193
Introduction
Hiroko Matsuda and Pedro Iacobelli
Okinawa, embedded within the Ryukyu Archipelago (Nansei shotō), is the
name of one of the smallest Japanese prefectures. It is comprised of 49 inhabited islands and has a population of over 1.4 million residents in an area
slightly over 2,000 square kilometers—less than 1 percent of Japan. While
Okinawa Prefecture not only attracts numerous Japanese and international
tourists, it also draws much scholarly attention. Its location, spreading over
sub-tropics, offers abundant material for natural scientific studies, and its rich
historical past (as a former kingdom) attracts numerous worldwide archeologists and historians. Gusuku sites and related monuments, which have been
UNESCO’s World Heritage sites since 2000, are examples of the Ryukyu
Kingdom’s unique traditions and historical development.
Above all, Okinawa has drawn international attention because of the longstanding U.S. military bases on the Islands (see figure 0.1). According to
the 2015 Base Structure report of the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S.
officially maintains 587 military installations located in 42 foreign countries:
of which 181 are located in Germany, 122 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea
(United States of America. Office of the Secretary of Defense 2015, 6). The
majority of the bases in Japan are concentrated in Okinawa prefecture. Since
its deployment in 1945, American personnel have been involved in a number
of felonies affecting the local Okinawan population. In particular, the rape
of a 12-year-old school girl by U.S. servicemen in 1995 brought academic
attention to Okinawa and its problems, and has been repeatedly mentioned
as a symbol of “suffering and resistance” in postwar Okinawan history. The
term “Cold War Island” that has become commonplace among scholars of
Okinawa describes the geopolitical contingencies in which the islands are
embedded.
vii
viii
Introduction
Figure 0.1. Okinawa and the region.
Australian National University.
The U.S.-Japan security treaty, a result of Cold War era strategic considerations, has overwhelmingly framed the narrative of Okinawa. Nevertheless
the phrase “Cold War Island” also carries the adverse effect of blurring or
ignoring the human dimension found within Okinawa prefecture beyond the
security treaty. While we agree that the rape of a schoolgirl by American
military servicemen, followed by the huge anti-base demonstration of over
Introduction
ix
85,000 people in 1995, marks one of the turning points of postwar Okinawan
history, this book argues that some of the consequences of the long-standing
U.S. military base presence in the islands go much deeper than the militarycivilian cleavage and have had a transnational impact greater than universally
imagined.
In short, this volume features a selection of studies that examine social and
cultural transformations in Okinawa and the Asia-Pacific region in the face
of the ongoing presence of American military bases. The title of Rethinking
Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation has a twofold meaning.
First, the book explores how people have struggled and envisioned the future
of Okinawa beyond American occupation, and elaborates on how these politics have been formed by multiple agential forces beyond the territory of Okinawa. Secondly, the book examines how the establishment of foreign military
bases brought about unintended consequences that moved beyond the geographical limits of the Okinawa prefecture. It also implies that the American
military presence in Okinawa should not be simply taken as a legacy of the
Cold War; rather the book illuminates how the U.S. occupation in Okinawa
has been associated with the colonial legacies of American domination in the
Philippines and Hawaii.
The conceptualization of Okinawa’s identity, race, culture and political
community has been studied recently from a similar prism to the one that this
volume uses. Wendy Matsumura’s The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor and Theorizations of Community (2015) provides a model
for this trend inasmuch as Matsumura’s understanding of Okinawa—since
the late nineteenth century up to the 1930s—is based on internal political and
economic spheres within the islands linked to the region’s transformation
“into distinct social spaces” (Matsumura 2015, 2). The violent confrontations between indigenous and non-indigenous political and economic power
holders are considered intrinsic to the process of disposition of Okinawa. The
identification of Okinawa as a unified concept is problematized and contextualized within the multiple local ramifications of the economic sphere bringing about the collective differences in cultural, racial, or ethnic senses. The
community is seen from the prism of the hierarchies and class relation. This
perspective contributes to the understanding of how “new social categories
and relations between colonizer and colonized were formed and transformed”
(Matsumura 2015, 8). In other words, this work go often beyond what is seen
in studies on Okinawa by stressing the elements of conflict and change within
the micro-economies found in the region.
Indeed, instead of simply presenting the important past events which occurred in Okinawa over the past few decades, Rethinking Postwar Okinawa:
Beyond American Occupation attempts to take up the historiography of post-
x
Introduction
war Okinawa for discussion. Thus, the opening chapter by Sensui Hidekazu
provides a good conceptual introduction to this volume. The chapter takes a
fresh look into George Kerr’s best seller and extremely influential Okinawa:
The History of an Island People (1958) by illuminating how Okinawan
historians influenced Kerr’s historical views of the Ryukyu Islands. Sensui
pays particular attention to three renowned Okinawan scholars—Iha Fuyū,
Higashionna Kanjun, and Shimabukuro Zenpatsu—and examines their interpretations of the Ryukyuan historical figures Sai On and Shoˉ Joˉken.
The Ryukyu Kingdom emerged as a result of the unification of three kingdoms circa 1430 and it was embedded from its birth in a political and cultural
system dominated by China. Moreover, Okinawan social space was expanded
by the wealth of connections and trade between the Ryukyu Kingdom and
other East Asian states. However, Ryukyuan trade and inter-state activities
began to fade from the mid-sixteenth century on. The resulting situation, as
analyzed by Takara Kurayoshi, meant the incorporation of the Ryukyu Kingdom as a foreign state (ikoku) into the administrative system for domains
within Japan (bakuhan taisei) (Takara 1989a, 392). To this end, Shuri was allowed to rule the territory and to keep their customs and language; they were
not, however, permitted to mention their relation with the Satsuma daimyo to
others. This relationship formed a political triangle (Japan, Ryukyu, China)
that lasted from 1609 to 1879. Under the dual influences of China and Japan,
Sai On (1682–1761) served the king Shō Kei as a scholar-official, and he has
been popularly remembered as a model political figure of Ryukyuan history.
Sensui carefully examines how Iha, Higashionna and Shimabukuro evaluate
Sai On differently. To conclude, he contends:
In postwar Okinawa, historiography became a contentious space in which people with competing historical accounts of the islands’ past tried to get an edge
in the ongoing negotiations over the sovereignty of the Ryukyu Islands. Beyond
such immediate concern over a political agenda, there is another dimension in
which postwar Okinawan historiography should be discussed.
Like many contemporary scholars on American Empire and East Asian Studies, the authors of Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation are concerned with the current political and social situations that are undeniably related to the U.S. military bases located on the island of Okinawa.
Yet, we do not interpret Okinawa’s current situation simply as a consequence
of triangular politics between Okinawan residents, the Japanese government
and the U.S. authorities as is often done. Rather, this book demonstrates how
contemporary Okinawa has been built by multiple agencies, not just by local Okinawans, the Japanese and Americans. This volume studies Okinawa
beyond Okinawa, providing an alternative view of post-World War II Oki-
Introduction
xi
nawan history where significant movements of ideas, peoples and cultures
challenge the limit of state sovereignty and boundaries based on race, class
and ethnicity. The chapters that follow seek to retrieve Okinawa from overstretched narratives that emphasize the military/security space over social
experiences, transformations and meanings. Instead, this volume proposes a
re-imagination of Okinawa as a heterogenous and transnational space, tightly
interconnected to the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
BEYOND ANTI-/NATIONALISTS’ DISCOURSES
The legacy of the Ryukyu Kingdom supported the aspiration for greater independence and higher interaction within the Asia-Pacific region, as a way
to carve out a substantial degree of autonomy for itself from the dominant
regional powers. The limited autonomy that the Ryukyu Kingdom enjoyed
from 1609 was greatly destroyed by the Meiji government in the 1870s and
with it Ryukyuan statehood was dismantled. Following the intervention of
Western powers in Japanese politics, the Japanese government sought to adjust its territoriality to align with international law. This shift meant that the
southern border of Japan had to be clarified in terms of Westphalian based
international law and not in the Asian style international order (Camacho
and Ueunten 2010, 94; Iacobelli 2017, chap. 6). The Japanese annexation
of the Ryukyu Islands, euphemistically known as “the disposal of the Kingdom of Ryuˉkyuˉ” (Ryukyu shobun), concluded after a seven-year process.
The annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom and the establishment of Okinawa
Prefecture was followed by a set of thorough assimilation policies, including Japanese-style school education, which was swiftly introduced in 1881,
and the first physical examination for conscription, which was introduced in
1898. The history and culture of Okinawa under full mainland Japanese rule
was reduced and diminished. Their past as a social and cultural vortex in a
maritime region was erased by the Japanese imperial authorities.
The ruthless face of Japanese semi-colonial rule became particularly evident in the Battle of Okinawa (1945) where over 200,000 people died and
many more were injured (Feifer 1992; Yahara 1995). It was the culmination
of the contested nature of nation-building and discontinuities in Okinawa
since the “disposition of the Ryukyus” over 60 years prior. The end of the war
and subsequent direct domination by the U.S. military until 1972 constitutes
in itself another chapter in Okinawa’s history. Due to strategic considerations
at the time with China’s civil war and the conflict in the Korean peninsula,
the American view of retaining control of the whole of Okinawa, and not only
of the bases located there, slowly began to gain force from late 1947 to 1948.
xii
Introduction
Okinawa was one of many insular Pacific territories occupied by the U.S. in
the wake of World War II, and an important part of the U.S. defense line in
the Pacific (Morris-Suzuki 2010, chap. 5). Indeed, the American retention of
Okinawa became one of the main issues during the peace treaty negotiations.
John Foster Dulles decided to obtain an option to seek trusteeship if desired
by the U.S. in the peace treaty with Japan but in the meantime the U.S. would
retain full control of Okinawa. That is, Dulles created a legal void, a loophole,
whereby the U.S. could remain in control of the islands. The San Francisco
Peace Treaty in Article 3 granted the U.S. the right to “the exercise all and
any power of administration, legislation and jurisdiction over the territory and
inhabitants” in the Ryukyu Islands.1 As a result, Japan’s role in the new Okinawan political structure was almost completely superseded. Consequently,
Okinawa was left in a position of ambiguity and open to abuse.2
Because of Okinawa’s ambiguous and marginalized status in the course
of Japanese nation-building, “nation” and “nationalism” have occupied the
central position in the discourses of modern Okinawan history writing. Some
aspired after Okinawa’s full and equal membership to Japanese nation-state
status, and others, such as hanfukkiron-sha (proponents of opposition to reversion), severely criticized the logic of national integration itself. Nonetheless, instead of highlighting Okinawa’s marginalized position in the Japanese
nation-state framework, Rethinking Postwar Okinawa illuminates another
face of postwar Okinawa that has been overshadowed by anti-/nationalists’
discourses. Indeed, another trait in the American occupation was the transnational movement of people and ideas both toward and out of the Okinawan
archipelago. A growing number of scholars have been paying attention to
new dynamics of people’s movements created within the U.S. military base
system—including not just regular soldiers, but also military families, construction workers, sex workers, and other types of laborers whose work is
closely associated to the military bases.
Chapter 3 by Johanna O. Zulueta highlights how the presence of the U.S.
military bases brought over not only American soldiers from the homeland,
but also male and female laborers from a former U.S. colony, the Philippines,
who worked inside and outside the bases. Initially brought over by the U.S.
administration to work in the construction sector and in the base-building
projects, the Filipino community grew bigger, forming a community closely
connected with the local Okinawan population. As argued, postcolonial relationships as well as other structural factors are significant when looking at
the Filipino migration project. This specific migration case is a window into
the complex and intertwined racial and colonial implications of the growing
U.S. military system in the Asia Pacific region.
Chapter 4 by Ryan Masaaki Yokota intervenes in studies of the reversion
era by illuminating lesser-known debates regarding “local autonomy” that
Introduction
xiii
were conceptualized by Okinawan intellectuals. The author focuses on local
autonomy proposals which not only critiqued Okinawan reversion as a threat
to the many postwar democratic rights that Okinawans had fought for, but
also sought to use the framework of Japanese systems of local autonomy, to
assert the maintenance of Okinawan rights and even the possibility for their
augmentation. By carefully looking into multiple reversion-era autonomy
proposals, Yokota not only demonstrates how Okinawan debates on reversion
were formed through interactions with Japanese intellectual discussions, but
also how they developed along a very different course which expressed the
particularity of Okinawan rights claims.
In a different vein, Takahashi Shinnosuke explores in chapter 5 the nature
of Okinawa’s anti-military base activism with a particular focus on transnational networks of East Asia. International audiences tend to understand Okinawa’s anti-military base activism within a simplistic framework of American dominance versus local people’s opposition. Takahashi stresses the great
role of transnational network in Okinawa’s activism, and traces the regional
interconnectedness between Okinawa’s historian Arasaki Moriteru and the
anti-base movements in Korea, China and mainland Japan since the 1970s.
RETHINKING CONSEQUENCES
OF THE LONG STANDING BASES
There has been a growing interest in the ways in which the long-standing U.S.
military bases have had a social and cultural impact on different host communities in East Asia. Much earlier than the post 9/11 debate on “American
Empire” Cynthia Enloe (1990; 1993; 2000) began her research on the gendered impacts of the U.S. military presence on local people. More recently,
Seungsook Moon pointed out that “studies of the role of the U.S. military
around the world have been dominated by strategic studies” and stresses the
significance of studies that unveil the “cultural consequences of the long-term
U.S. military presence in difference host societies” (2016, 32). Similarly, De
Matos and Ward (2012) have explored the gendered consequences of military
occupation—both on the occupier and the occupied—in various parts of the
world, including North and South East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and
the Pacific Islands. With a particular emphasis on women’s experiences in
South Korea, Germany, Japan and Okinawa, Hӧrn and Moon (2010) elucidate the unevenly imposed social costs of U.S. military expansion.
Voluminous past studies have already unveiled in what ways the US military bases gravely impacted people’s lives in the Ryukyu Islands, and how
people resisted against brutal military rule. Recent scholars have further investigated the broader and deeper cultural consequences of U.S. military rule
xiv
Introduction
and have revealed how local people not only resisted the military, but also
played active roles in military rule on the Islands. For instance, Mire Koikari
(2015) examined how domestic life in Okinawa changed under American
cultural hegemony, illustrating the role American women, including military
wives and teachers, played in promoting domestic education movements
in Okinawa. In this volume, chapter 2 by Masubuchi explores the case of
Okinawan “public health nurses,” and elucidates a compelling story of U.S.
ideological influences on the health system in Okinawa. Although there was
a tendency of portraying Okinawan women as either victims or resisters,
Masubuchi challenges the binary framework of the “American occupiers”
versus “victims/resisters of Okinawan women,” and demonstrates Okinawan
women’s agency in working closely with USCAR officials as public health
nurses.
Each of the last three chapters explores the consequences of the long-standing U.S. bases and reconsiders the notion of local people’s agency. Chapter
6 by Ayako Takamori examines the experiences of mixed-race Okinawans
which are “often regarded as embodying the condition of a militarized ‘post’coloniality in contemporary Okinawa.” She presents a critical review of the
concept of “hybridity” in connections to “mixed-race” Japanese (haˉfu) in
Japan and Okinawa. She goes beyond the traditional narratives on the theoretical implications of the concept and elaborates a gloomy picture of the
personal and communal dislocations of those typically identified as “half.”
Ariko S. Ikehara’s study looks into the legacies of long-standing U.S.
bases inscribed into spoken and written words. Through the literary works of
three Okinawan writers, Sakiyama Tami, Yoshihara Komachi, and Nakada
Tsuyoshi, the author offers “champurū text” as an interpretative tool that illuminates the performative space between fiction and life. Life in this context
is mixed and non-binary that hails the “American” element in the category
of Okinawan or Asian in the context of postwar culture, history, and society,
unsettling the idea of Asia as foreign, the “Other,” and non-western.
Finally Laura Kina closes this volume with a study on Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa.3 Kina examines Mao Ishikawa´s “Hot Days in Camp
Hansen!!”—an artistic project on Okinawa women (Mao´s friends) engaged
as hostesses in the service industry and their G.I. boyfriends—and “Life in
Philly,” an exploration of the everyday life of African American servicemen
in the U.S. after their time in Okinawa. In exploring Ishikawa’s challenge in
presenting an alternative image of “Okinawan women,” the chapter demonstrates the agency of Okinawan women, who tend to be portrayed as either
“victims” or “resisters.” Furthermore, the author elucidates on how Ishikawa
fought against and examines the transnational framing of Okinawan and African American bodies, displayed in Ishikawa’s works.
Introduction
xv
Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation brings to the
fore some of the lesser told stories behind the postwar history of the Ryukyu
Islands; that is, the often unacknowledged consequences of the deep contradictions in a land that serves its people and foreign defense purposes at the
same time. To what extent has the U.S. presence affected the mobility of
people within and outside the archipelago? What sort of new social spaces
have been formed as a result of the encounter between American might and
Okinawan locals? How does history play a role in shaping people´s agency
and the transnationality of Okinawa´s “localities”? This book attempts to
provide an answer to these questions.
NOTES
1. “Treaty of Peace with Japan” in UCLA East Asia Studies Documents at http://
www.international.ucla.edu/eas/documents/peace1951.htm accessed 7 April 2010.
This arrangement is what John Dower and many others have called the most inequitable bilateral agreement the U.S. had entered into after the war (Dower 1993). For
a study on Article 3 and its consequences within and outside Okinawa see Iacobelli
2013.
2. This can be seen in Okinawa’s postwar migration policies. See Iacobelli 2017.
3. For chapter 8, Japanese personal names are presented in the American manner
with the first name followed by the surname. For the rest of this volume, Japanese
personal names are given in the text in the customary order, family name first. Works
published in English by Japanese authors are given in Western order, surname last.
Chapter One
History as a Mirror of Self
A Note on Postwar
Okinawan Historiography
Hidekazu Sensui
On 18 January 1952, at Camp Zukeran, the headquarters of the United States
Army Ryukyu Islands, a group of three visiting scholars from the American
continent conferred with Civil Affairs officers. They were planning a secondyear series for the Scientific Investigations of the Ryukyu Islands (SIRI). The
United States was already determined to continue its military occupation of
the islands, even after the San Francisco settlement that the sovereignty of
the rest of Japan would return to the Japanese government, and the United
States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR) needed reliable
information on local society, public health conditions, and available natural
resources to formulate long-term civil affairs programs.
The renowned zoologist Harold Coolidge (1904–85) represented the Pacific Science Board of the National Research Council, which organized the
SIRI projects under contract with the Department of the Army. The cultural
anthropologist George Murdock (1897–1985) made his second visit to Okinawa after his discharge from service in late 1945. Before his service in the
Navy Military Government in Okinawa, he was the chief of a naval research
unit which edited the Civil Affairs Handbook on the Ryukyu Islands (Office
of the Chief of Naval Operations 1944a) along with other handbooks on each
island group of Japan’s Pacific possessions. The third visitor, the historian
George Kerr (1911–1992), was a wartime colleague of Murdock; both were
commissioned at the Naval School of Military Government and Administration in New York. Although Kerr took charge of a different field of research,
being assigned the duty of preparing the Civil Affairs Handbooks on Taiwan
(e.g., Office of the Chief of Naval Operations 1944b), he was soon to become
known as the author of Okinawa: The History of an Island People (Kerr
1958). The origin of this work, which to date is recognized as the only one
of its kind in any European language, is the focus of this chapter.1 I will pay
1
2
Chapter One
particular attention to the Okinawan scholars who provided source materials to Kerr’s work but who have remained little known outside a Japanese
readership.
Kerr’s book originated from his SIRI report submitted in June 1953 (Kerr
1953). During the January 1952 conference, Brigadier General James Lewis,
the USCAR Civil Administrator, commissioned Kerr to write the report, with
the intention of using it as a supplementary reader in higher education. Kerr
was then a Taiwan specialist with some training in Japanese art history, but
was not yet knowledgeable about Ryukyuan history. One could reasonably
ask how it was possible for him to complete the assignment in such a short
time. His rough notes recording the conference will illuminate this question.
At one point in the discussion which led to a recognition of the need for appreciation of local people and culture, the following conversation appeared
in the notes:
No Ryukyu history taught in schools till 1946.
What materials from Ryukyu history?
Iha, Shimabukuro, Higaonna (Kerr n. d.).
The last line refers to the names of three Okinawan scholars renowned in the
field of Ryukyuan history: Iha Fuyū (1876–1947), Shimabukuro Zenpatsu
(1888–1953), and Higashionna Kanjun (1882–1963).2 Kerr depended on their
works, though not exclusively, and he received direct guidance from two of
them.
Analyses of wartime and postwar American discourse on the Ryukyus
have exposed an intention to establish historical and cultural grounds for justifying the political separation of the Ryukyus from Japan. Since few American scholars prepared themselves to handle relevant historical documents,
they had to rely on pre-existing studies by Japanese and Okinawan scholars.
A question arises when observing this intellectual juncture: how was the
existing Ryukyuan history made to fit in with a new theme that USCAR expected Kerr to develop? Since the three Okinawan scholars were embedded
in Japanese intellectual tradition, their works seem not to have been readily
usable. The fact was that these Okinawan scholars were actually propounding different interpretations of the history of their home islands. When Kerr
met Shimabukuro and Higashionna, they were even debating on a certain
historical figure, Shō Jōken (1617–1676). The nature of Shō’s administration,
his personal character, and his vision of Ryukyuan identity were discussed
particularly in comparison with another statesman, Sai On (1682–1762). In
other words, the envisioning of Okinawan identity in postwar Okinawa was
rooted in a long history of debate among Okinawan intellectuals. It is therefore necessary to examine their arguments, their backgrounds, and Kerr’s
selective use of their works.
History as a Mirror of Self
3
SAI ON IN POSTWAR NATIVE ADMINISTRATION
In April 1946, systematic school education was resumed in Okinawa. In
history classes, the curriculum began with the “Observations of Our Home
Land,” developed through “Outline of Okinawan History,” and advanced into
“Eastern and Western Histories Viewed from Okinawa” (Bunkyo Kenkyu
Chosa-bu 1985, 198–199). A novelty was the second step, Ryukyuan history,
which replaced “National [i.e., Japanese] History” which had been taught
to early-teen pupils in the fifth and sixth grades of prewar primary schools.
The islands of the Ryukyus did not come under the rule of any central ruling
power of Japan until 1609, when troops of the Satsuma domain conquered
the Kingdom of Ryukyu. The Shimazu lord of Satsuma reassigned the status
of the Ryukyuan king as his own vassal, and thereby created him an indirect
vassal of the shogun in Yedo. However, the long-established Ryukyuan
tributary relation with China continued; by diplomatic convention the crown
was bestowed upon a new king by the emperor of China. This so-called “dual
subjugation” was eventually terminated in 1879 when the kingdom was abolished and its territory turned into one of the prefectures of Japan. “National
history” dealt with little of this relatively independent historical development
(Kondō 1995).
Shimabukuro Zenpatsu, one of the three Okinawan scholars mentioned in
the January 1952 conference between USCAR and the Pacific Science Board,
edited the textbook to be used in the new subject of Ryukyuan history. Shimabukuro had a long teaching career, but in postwar Okinawa, he worked on the
front lines of the native administration. American troops invaded Okinawa in
April 1945, and by the time Tokyo accepted surrender in August, Okinawan
civilians in the refugee camps had organized a group of their representatives,
the Okinawa Advisory Council. This council developed into the Okinawa
Civilian Administration the following April and continued as the executive
organ until a popularly elected native government, the Okinawa Guntoˉ Seifu,
replaced it in November 1950. During those five years, the American military government appointed the educator Shikiya Kōshin (1884–1955) as the
head of the Council and that of the Civilian Administration. Before the war,
Shimabukuro taught at a private middle school founded by Shikiya. After
the war, Shimabukuro worked again under Shikiya, who assigned him as the
chief secretary of the Office of Chiji (native governor), and then as the director of the Department of Commerce and Industry.
Those early postwar administrations were characterized by Okinawan nationalism. Shikiya was keen to send all and any mainlanders back to Japan. In
early summer 1946, expecting a mass repatriation of Okinawans from former
Japanese colonies, he repeated a request that the American military government deport Japanese at the earliest occasion. He may have thereby created
4
Chapter One
jobs for Okinawan repatriates, but this practical concern cannot fully explain
the fact that whereas 140,000 Okinawans were estimated to come back, the
number of Japanese leaving the island was no more than 14,000. Shikiya also
insisted that Japanese POWs who had married Okinawans be sent back, even
though American authorities suggested the contrary (Okinawa-ken Shiryō
Hensanjo 1988, 76, 118, 195; cf. Asano 2007, 306–307). Shikiya seems to
have intended that he ethnically homogenize the island. Japanese history thus
had no place in this Okinawan nationalism.
A particular stateman of the Kingdom of Ryukyu was popular among those
postwar Okinawan nationalists. Sai On was a scholar-official who served
king Shō Kei (1700–1751) as his tutor and court councilor3 in much of the
first half of the eighteenth century. Born into a diplomat family of Chinese
descent, the young Sai went to China to study. Applying the knowledge
of practical science which he studied there, he successfully increased the
productivity of Ryukyu. It was the time when established rule by Satsuma
ironically ensured political stability, under which people enjoyed mastering
Japanese and Chinese cultural influences and creating distinctively Ryukyuan
arts and crafts. Sai presided over that golden age which caused the kingdom
to bloom economically and culturally. Sai’s administration was remembered
two centuries thereafter as the historical model of a statesman in Okinawa. In
the inaugural address of the Okinawan Advisory Council, the chief Shikiya
expressed his determination “to revive the age of Sai On” (Kayō 1986, 19).
Shikiya requested one of his subordinates to translate Sai’s Hitori monogatari
(One Man’s Views), an outline of key policy issues which Sai wrote in 1750,
into modern Japanese, which was then published in mimeographed form
by the Ryukyu Cultural Affairs Association (Ryukyu Bunka Kenkyu Kai),
a cultural group on Okinawa (Yamada 1950). Shikiya wrote the foreword,
and Shimabukuro contributed Sai’s biography as an appendix. The afterword
was written by Matayoshi Kōwa (1887–1953), vice-governor of the Okinawa
Civilian Administration.
Why did Sai appeal to the leadership of postwar Okinawa? Whereas the
decades of the spontaneously developed Ryukyuan trading state before 1609
might appear better suited to Okinawan nationalism, those of the humiliating
foreign (Satsuma) domination after 1609 might not. However in the afterword, Matayoshi pointed out, “The present situation strikingly resembles
the one after the Satsuma conquest,” and wished for the “appearance of the
Sai On of the new age” (Yamada 1950, 41, 46). Evidently, Matayoshi was
not simply glorifying the past, but rather admiring the creation of glory under adverse circumstances. The difficulty which Sai had faced was similar
History as a Mirror of Self
5
with that of his own situation. Matayoshi, referring to Sai’s statement, “It
is thanks to Satsuma’s care that the islanders can live and work in peace
and contentment,” wrote that he could easily imagine Sai’s anguish over the
dilemma (Yamada 1950, 45). The minutes of the liaison conferences with
American civil affairs officers (Okinawa-ken Shiryō Hensanjo 1988) record
that Shikiya, Matayoshi and Shimabukuro held meetings with the American
officers twice a week and negotiated with utmost prudence in order to secure
the islanders’ interests. It will be worth noting in this context that Shikiya
signed the foreword on a public holiday: “On May 28, a memorial for the
Ryukyu-American Friendship Day.” It was a newly designated holiday under
the American occupation to celebrate Commodore Matthew Perry’s visit to
Okinawa. In other words, these Okinawan administrators saw themselves in
the person of Sai On.
The removal of Japanese history was surely unprecedented in modern
education in Okinawa. That, however, did not mean that Ryukyuan history
had not been taught at all. Shimabukuro and other educated Okinawans built
up a sizeable stock of local-historical studies, and passed their knowledge on
to the wider public through local newspapers and public lectures. Even in
the official curriculum, teaching local history was not completely new. With
the postwar resumption of school education, the “Observation of Our Home
Land” was taught to fourth-grade pupils. Such an introductory class to history
study had already been taught nationwide under the identical title to wartime
pupils of the same age (Kokuni 2012).
In preparing postwar textbooks, Okinawan teachers set and adopted the
“Guidelines for Editing Textbooks,” which stipulated that “new textbooks
mostly treat Okinawan materials and thereby embody the Okinawan Way (the
spirit of building a new Okinawa) in order to make [pupils and students] enthusiastic” (Bunkyo Kenkyū Chōsa-bu 1985, 246). The Guidelines explains
the “Okinawan Way,” referring to the idea of the “Bridge between Nations.”
That famous phrase came from the line inscribed in a bronze bell hung at
Shuri Castle in 1458 when the kingdom was a spontaneously developed
trading state. Ryukyuans’ maritime activities throughout the East and South
China Seas were interpreted as evidence of their inherent internationalism,
which postwar Okinawans should revive (Bunkyo Kenkyū Chōsa-bu 1985,
246). However, during wartime, the same activities had been interpreted as
a historical precedent to prove the “Japanese” capability of extending its
power over Southeast Asia (e.g., Asato 1941). The fundamental question,
therefore, was neither whether Ryukyuan history was to be taught or not, nor
whether Ryukyuan heritage was to be praised or dismissed. It was rather how
Ryukyuan heritage was to be honored and how that honoring differed from
the way it was previously appreciated.
6
Chapter One
IHA FUYŪ AND RYUKYUAN HERITAGE IN PREWAR JAPAN
Iha Fuyū, a second Okinawan scholar whose name appeared in the 1952 SIRI
conference, is known as the “Father of Okinawan Studies.” He studied comparative linguistics at Tokyo Imperial University and deciphered a compilation of ancient Ryukyuan verses (Omoro sōshi). On the basis of phonological
evidence, he demonstrated similarities between the Ryukyuan and Japanese
languages, and thereon proposed a theory of the common ancestry between
the two peoples. His Ko Ryūkyū (Old Loochoo Viewed in the Light of Loochooan Studies), a seminal anthology of his early writings, represents an incontestable milestone in the study of the political figures of Ryukyu, just as it
does for other topics of inquiry in the field of Okinawan studies (Iha 1911a).
In the earliest version of his Ryukyuan history, “Tendencies in Ryukyuan
History (Ryuˉkyuˉ Shi no suˉsei)” (Iha 1911a, 61–106), Iha focused on three
Ryukyuan officers: Sai On, Shō Jōken, and Giwan Chōho (1823–1876).
Knowledge of Sai’s administration, as we have seen in the previous section,
became widely known through this work. Shō Jōken served as “chancellor,” or sessei, from the late 1660s to the early 1670s, a half century before
Sai came to power. Iha acknowledged that Shō had implemented a series of
political reforms and thereby rebuilt the economy after the devastation of
Satsuma invasion. Iha also appreciated that Shō had preceded Iha’s common
ancestry theory, and that Shō had laid the foundation for the Japanization of
Ryukyuan society. As for Giwan, who served as court councilor during the
time of Japanese annexation of the Ryukyus, Iha valued that he had rightly
anticipated that modern Okinawa would lie within Japan.
Iha nominated those three Ryukyuan officials as “representative politicians
of Okinawa” when the journal Okinawa kyōiku (Education in Okinawa) featured “Lives of Great Men of Our Land” (Iha 1911b). Interest in local history
was being raised nationwide at that time by the enactment of the Law Concerning Popular Education Research Groups (Tsūzoku Kyōiku Chyōsa Īnkai Sei,
1910). Yet, Shinjō Anzen, in his extended review of Okinawan studies, points
out an additional incentive which was particular to the Okinawan situation
(Shinjō 1975, 937–938). The Japanese Election Law was amended in March
1912, and citizens of Okinawa Prefecture became entitled to send their representatives to the Imperial Diet in Tokyo. In the preceding year, the islanders
were excited at the possibility that their long-standing wish would soon come
true. In the midst of that excitement, Iha was invited to a public lecture where
he introduced Chancellor Shō and Court Councilors Sai and Giwan as models
for the coming Okinawan members of the Diet (Okinawa mainichi shimbun,
17 July 1911).
History as a Mirror of Self
7
Iha’s popularization of the three “great men of Ryukyu” soon saw an unexpected outcome. In November 1915, Emperor Taishō was enthroned, and
to celebrate the occasion he conferred decorations on historical figures. The
three Ryukyuan officials were aligned with great Japanese men in receiving honors (Ryukyu shinpō, 13 November 1915). Such recognition by the
Japanese government later extended to the “stage” on which these Ryukyuan
officials had played real history. After enthusiastic lobbying by the Japanese
architect Itō Chūta (1867–1954) and the Japanese dyeing artist Kamakura
Yoshitarō (1898–1983), the decaying Shuri Castle was saved from planned
demolition and designated a national treasure in 1925. That was followed
eight years later by the designation of eighteen historical buildings including
the Enkakuji temple, the Sōenji temple, and other religious sites. By the time
those cultural assets were razed to the ground in the Battle of Okinawa, the
number of national treasures in Okinawa had risen to twenty-two.
Certainly, the heritage of the Kingdom was a source of local pride. However, if the Japanese state acknowledged the value of Ryukyuan heritage,
praise for it alone could not be taken as a sign of Okinawan nationalism. Kano
Masanao, in his biographical study of Iha (Kano 1993), explains his ideological outlook. In Iha’s framework, the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyus in
1879 was the reunion of two branches of one nation; each group had parted
from the other some 2,000 years before. Iha argued that if the major branch
(i.e., the mainland Japanese) forced the minor (i.e., the Okinawans) to remove
the uniqueness or individuality that the latter had developed as a result of that
isolated 2,000 years of existence from the former, it would be more hindering than helpful to the reunion. If the Okinawans lost their individuality, it
would not only mean “spiritual suicide” for themselves, but also the “general
national loss” for the Empire of Japan. This is because the greatness of a
nation lies in its capacity to embrace heterogeneous elements (Kano 1993,
96–97; Iha 1911a, 94–104). It is true that governmental support for Ryukyuan
culture, after all, ended with the state control of Okinawan people, as illustrated by the fact that Shuri Castle was restored as a Shinto shrine (Loo 2014).
However, it is also true that both the emperor’s decoration and the national
treasure designation was a realization of what Iha had originally hoped for.
It is of note that Iha’s strategy could have worked whether or not the Okinawans shared their ultimate ancestry with the Japanese. What was then the
point of his maintaining that hypothesis? According to Kano, Iha’s theory of a
common ancestry was an instrument with which the Okinawans could secure
a better position than other ethnic minorities. Iha returned home as the first
Okinawan with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and he took the lead among local
intellectuals as the founding director of the Okinawa Prefectural Library. He
felt acutely responsible for enhancing the social status of his fellow islanders.
That practical concern made Iha insist on the hypothesis.
8
Chapter One
Educated young Okinawans followed Iha’s leadership, but kept cool
regarding his enthusiastic advocacy of the common ancestry theory. For
instance, Iha’s best disciple Higa Shunchō (1883–1977) recorded his impression of Iha’s work as follows:
I have finished reading “Theory of Ryukyuan Race” [the opening article of Ko
Ryukyu]. The conclusion is that the Ryukyuans are Japanese race. That is Professor Iha’s pet theory. However, there is a particular reason that he published
such theory. In the professor’s view, an assimilation into the Japanese identity
is the easiest way through which the Ryukyuans will achieve happiness. . . .
Shō Jōken, Sai On, and Giwan Chōho were never Japan admirers but rather had
respect for China. They advocated Ryukyuans’ Japanese identity only because
it would bring happiness to Ryukyuan people (1973, 295).
While Higa openly discussed that the common ancestry theory was only an
instrument, Iha could not confess that it was so, even if he thought it was. A
stronger sense of mission to provide relief to his fellow islanders isolated Iha.
He closed his earliest version of Ryukyuan history, “Tendencies in Ryukyuan
History,” with three lines, each quoted from Shō, Sai and Giwan, all confessing the loneliness of a statesman. In doing that, as Kano points out, Iha
confessed his own loneliness (Kano 1993, 101–104).
SHIMABUKURO’S VIEW OF RYUKYUAN HERITAGE
Shimabukuro Zenpatsu was also among the young Okinawans who read Iha’s
Ko Ryūkyū with keen interest. In the book, Sai On’s One Man’s Views and
Shō Jōken’s The Directives (Haneji shioki) were printed in type. Those rare
manuscripts were made available to a wider readership, including Shimabukuro, who was in Kyoto as a student of law at Kyoto Imperial University.
Upon reading those works by Sai and Shō, Shimabukuro published his own
interpretation (Shimabukuro 1912a, 1912b).
Shimabukuro concurred with Iha in recognizing Sai On as the most able
politician in Ryukyuan history but added more attention to Sai’s practicalscientific skills. According to Shimabukuro, Sai well understood the law of
supply and demand. Whereas Sai deplored drinking as a cause of social evils,
he promoted, rather than discouraged, the brewing industry in order to maximize crop production. Without commercial incentive, Sai believed, farmers
would cultivate no more land than necessary for tax payment and their own
subsistence. He metaphorically expressed the precarious balance required
between such contradictory policies as “guiding a horse by means of rotten
reins” (Shimabukuro 1912b).
History as a Mirror of Self
9
As for Shō Jōken, however, Shimabukuro’s view was different from Iha’s.
Shō was born of Ryukyuan royal descent, studied the Japanese arts and literature, and came into politics in 1666. About a half century after a defeat
to Satsuma, the Ryukyuan economy remained broken and public morals
degenerate. Chancellor Shō enforced strict discipline among royal officials
to curtail their overspending and to eliminate corruption among them. As a
result, he managed to restore a stable economy within a decade. Shimabukuro
acknowledged Shō’s achievement, but he praised it far less than Sai On’s;
Shō had no sense of entrepreneurship as had Sai, and Shō only implemented
defensive measures to economize on expenses. Such actions demonstrated,
according to Shimabukuro, a sign of Ryukyuan cowardliness that stood in
contrast to Sai’s caliber as a man who originated from a powerful nation
(Shimabukuro 1912b, January 25).
Whereas Iha highly valued Shō’s advocacy of the Japanese origin of the
Ryukyuans (Iha 1911a, 71–75),4 Shimabukuro regarded Shō’s common ancestry theory as no more than an expression of Shō’s flattering of the Japanese. Shimabukuro also denied the possibility that Shō had adopted a prudent
strategy only to cope with the conquerors because Shimabukuro believed that
Shō had been too nervous and sentimental to make such a calculated move.
Although Shimabukuro admitted that Shō had laid the ground for a “happy
Okinawa Prefecture” in modern times, it was sheer fortune that his taste for
things Japanese had concurred with the actual course of history (Shimabukuro 1912a, January 16).
Shimabukuro’s low opinion of Shō’s common ancestry theory can further
be explained with reference to Shimabukuro’s conception of ethnicity. In
his biographical study of Shimabukuro, Yakabi Osamu points out that while
Iha understood ethnicity in terms of objective markers such as language
and popular customs, Shimabukuro understood it as a matter of collective
consciousness (Yakabi 2010, 50–88). Thus, Shimabukuro stated, “It is not
unreasonable to consider the Ryukyuans as a people [minzoku] different
from, though very much closely related to, the Yamato people [i.e., the
mainlanders]”(Shimabukuro 1913, March 3).
However, such ethnic awareness was not incompatible with Japanese nationalism. Shimabukuro argued that ethnic variety would strengthen rather
than weaken the Japanese state. He suggested that it would be helpful to
encourage ethnic expression rather than to oppress it in order to make such
a supra-ethnic collectivity firmly united. He metaphorically compared the
Empire of Japan with an ideal orchestra in which various musical instruments
were harmoniously combined (Shimabukuro 1911). In this sense, despite his
academic disagreements with Iha, Shimabukuro seems to have shared Iha’s
vision for how their contemporaneous Okinawans should claim a place in the
10
Chapter One
prewar Japanese state. However, when this framework was dismantled after
the war, Shimabukuro entered into a debate about Shō Jōken, not with Iha
(who died in August 1947) but with another senior Okinawan scholar.
SHIMABUKURO-HIGASHIONNA DEBATE
Higashionna Kanjun was the third and last Okinawan scholar mentioned in
the 1952 conference between USCAR and the Pacific Science Board. He was
born in the city of Naha and went to high school and university in mainland
Japan just as Shimabukuro and Iha did. Unlike them, however, Higashionna
never returned to Okinawa to live. Having received formal training in history
at Tokyo Imperial University, Higashionna taught in high schools and universities in the capital city of Japan.
Higashionna’s debate with Shimabukuro was about how to evaluate Shō
Jōken’s teachings.5 Just as Shimabukuro and other leaders in Okinawa, Higashionna compared post-1945 Okinawa with Ryukyu after the 1609 invasion by Satsuma. However, unlike the Okinawan leadership, he took Shō’s
theory of the Japanese origin of the Ryukyuans as an example of what one
should follow in the postwar era. Self-awareness of being Japanese provided
dispirited seventeenth-century islanders with clear guidelines for recovery
from the 1609 disaster, which had been invited by Sinophile royal officials
and their Sinicization of the kingdom. Higashionna expected that the same
self-awareness would again provide guidelines for the islanders of the midtwentieth century who were confused about the uncertainty of their nationality (Higashionna 1951a).
The debate began with a book which Higashionna prepared for that purpose. The book Kochu Haneji shioki6 was an annotated collection of Shō’s
directives (Higashionna 1952). Higashionna described Shō as a man of faith.
Shō, for instance, cut funds for the annual royal pilgrimage to Kudaka Island,
an ancestral islet from which the Ryukyuans were said to have settled onto
the main island of Okinawa. Shō argued that if the Ryukyuans had originated
from Japan, it would make little difference whether the king went to the islet
to offer his prayer to the ancestors or while staying at his court; the former
style of service was as indirect or intermediated as the latter would be. Shō
believed that the king’s journey to Kudaka was irrationally costly, and should
not be continued (Higashionna 1952, 213–214). Such reforms directed at the
highest stratum of the kingdom met with strong resistance, but Shō declared
himself righteous and ready to stake his life for the cause of financially rebuilding the kingdom (Higashionna 1952, 192–193).
History as a Mirror of Self
11
In presenting Shō’s work, Higashionna reprimanded the current leadership
of Okinawa. He closed the foreword to his book by saying:
Even in this age, in which people only pursue the immediate benefits in life
under the name of democracy, my dear Shō Jōken, if he were here, would not
flatter the powerful for fear of being penalized, or thereby forget the pride of
[our] nation, and not turn a blind eye to the truth [that the Okinawans were Japanese]. . . . It has already been seven years since the war ended, but unfortunately,
another Shō Jōken has not yet come forth. As I’m embarrassed to see our home
island left destroyed, I will wake him up from under the ground and make him
sound a warning bugle (Higashionna 1952, 148).
Certainly, Shimabukuro welcomed Higashionna’s project as a timely publication because Shimabukuro well understood that Sai’s great achievement
would not have been possible without Shō’s foundational work (Shimabukuro 1952). In his review of Higashionna’s book, however, Shimabukuro
criticized Higashionna that “It was unreasonable immediately to apply to
the present situation what our great ancestor did. It was, rather, necessary
to think of what such a great man would do if he were here today” (Shimabukuro 1953). In other words, Shimabukuro thought it unsound to force an
awareness of being Japanese into his contemporary islanders. If, then, Shō
had been there in his time, what did Shimabukuro think Shō would have
done?
An answer can be deduced from Shimabukuro’s article entitled “Affiliation of the Islands: History of Island Sorrows” (Shimabukuro 1956b). It was
originally written in early 1951 at the time when the draft of the U.S.-Japan
peace treaty was being negotiated. After tracing the history of the Ryukyu
Islands from their earliest settlement to his time, Shimabukuro concluded
that “Thanks to generous American aid, Okinawa has managed to recover
from despondency. When it is discussed where Okinawa should belong to, I
sincerely hope that people taste the past sorrows of living on a tiny peripheral
island and adopt a prudent attitude” (Shimabukuro 1956b, 61). Although it
was not stated that he preferred the continuance of American administration,
there was no doubt that he warned against hasty support for reversion to Japan. A few years later, that article was included in a posthumous collection
of Shimabukuro’s papers. Higashionna was asked to write a foreword to the
collection, in which he replied that “The island pains in the past were relieved
thanks to the Meiji Restoration. The islanders started their history all over
again as nationally conscious Japanese. . . . Appealing now to a foreign country for help will be tantamount to regarding oneself as an orphan and running
away home” (Higashionna 1956, 2–3).
12
Chapter One
In reviewing this Shimabukuro-Higashionna debate, Yakabi draws attention to the fact that Shimabukuro’s being in Okinawa while Higashionna
spoke from Tokyo. For Shimabukuro, who was negotiating with American
authorities day-to-day, prudence was an absolute necessity. What was going
through Shimabukuro’s mind, Yakabi supposes, was difficult to imagine for
Higashionna, who was free from such pressure (Yakabi 2010, 179–187). In
this context, Yakabi goes further to assert that Shimabukuro understood Shō
as a “mature strategist” from whom Shimabukuro learned how to lead the
reconstruction of postwar Okinawa (Yakabi 2010, 187). As we have seen, this
is a different view from that which Shimabukuro held in his youth. However,
whether or not Shō had in fact such a personality, it is certain that Shimabukuro was observing his own struggles in Shō’s struggles.7 Such psychological
projection also explains why Higashionna had a different view of the same
historical figure.
HIGASHIONNA’S BACKGROUND
Most profiles of Higashionna point to the fact that he received formal training
in history and was an orthodox historian influenced by historical positivism.
Less discussed are his abundant commentaries on current political events that
make allegorical use of his historical knowledge. This two-sidedness will be
illuminated by an analysis of a particular scholarly trend that was influential
during his formative years.
The bulletin Rekishi chiri (Historical Geography) was established in 1899
mostly by the faculty and graduate students of the National (i.e., Japanese)
History Course in the Department of History, College of Letters, at Tokyo
Imperial University. These historians focused their research on provincial
history, implemented on-site surveys, and encouraged a practical application
of historical knowledge to modern-day problems. In other words, the bulletin proposed a fresh approach to Japanese history going beyond traditional
academic history which only documented past events that affected, or were
affected by, the central government (Kawai 2013, 10–33). Higashionna entered the department in 1905 and found his familiarity with things Ryukyuan
to be an asset to Historical Geography. Lodging in Tokyo in the residence of
the last Ryukyuan king, Higashionna had numerous occasions to listen to the
former royal servants and to consult rare documents kept by the former royal
family. Meanwhile, Yoshida Togo (1864–1918) had completed his voluminous Gazetteer of Great Japan (Dai-nihon chimei jisho) and was planning a
sequel to deal with outer regions including Taiwan, Hokkaido and Ryukyu.
Higashionna was selected as the author of that celebrated publication (Yo-
History as a Mirror of Self
13
shida 1909); few people in Japanese academia knew much of Ryukyuan topography and the Kingdom’s status nomenclature which was closely related
to place names. Higashionna was able to establish himself as a rare specialist
in Ryukyuan history immediately after graduation.
One of the topics that young Higashionna enthusiastically pursued was
the Tametomo legend (Higashionna 1906, 1908). Tametomo refers to a
Japanese warrior hero, Minamoto Tametomo (1139–?), who was banished
after a defeat and according to legend escaped from exile but drifted to some
remote island. One version of the legend has it that the unidentified location was Okinawa Island and that Tametomo had fathered the first king of
Ryukyu. That version was recorded when Shō Jōken wrote the first history
of the kingdom in 1650. Katō Sango (1865–1939) displayed skepticism as to
whether Shō fabricated the legend in order to come to terms with the Satsuma
occupation because the Satsuma clan also claimed to be of Minamoto blood.
Higashionna refuted Kato by successfully searching for the evidence that the
legend had been extant at a time earlier than 1609.
However, Higashionna was not so much concerned with prehistoric
Ryukyuans as Iha was. Rather, he delved into unattended records to pursue
the particularities of Ryukyuan history. A different history could have been
the source of alienation from Japanese society, but Higashionna’s explorations often unearthed Ryukyuans’ invaluable contributions to Japanese life.
For example, a volume of Confucian maxims, Rikuyuengi, was introduced
by Ryukyuan scholars to Japan, where it was widely used as textbook in premodern schools and exercised influence on shaping Japanese behavioral patterns (Higashionna 1932). Similarly, Ryukyu was the window through which
Japan imported advanced medicine (anesthesia) and the sweet potato, which
saved many Japanese lives. In addition to those studies, a year-long field
survey conducted throughout Southeast Asia in 1933 as well as an in-depth
study of the Rekidai hōan, which was a recently discovered compilation of
Ryukyuan diplomatic documents, brought Higashionna peerless knowledge
of Ryukyuan foreign relations (Higashionna 1941a, 1941b). His successful
career was based on his contribution to Japanese academia by making full use
of his Ryukyuan heritage. It is interesting to reflect that his unique role stood
in parallel with the roles of the historical Ryukyuans whom he described in
his research.
In postwar Tokyo, Higashionna’s expertise became highly demanded; as
early as the summer of 1946, the Treaties Bureau of the Japanese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs requested from him details of the process by which Japan
and Qing China had negotiated sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands. Similar
requests were repeated in the latter half of the 1940s (Higashionna 1982).
Meanwhile, educated Okinawans in Tokyo organized themselves into the
14
Chapter One
Okinawa Cultural Association (Okinawa bunka kyōkai). When Higashionna
took his turn to deliver the association public lecture (November 1948 to
January 1949), he spoke on an “Outline of Okinawan History” (Higashionna
1950a). That extremely long lecture, twelve hours in total, began with Shō
Jōken’s theory of the Japanese descent of the Ryukyuans. Higashionna took
it as “grasping the essence of Okinawan history” (Higashionna 1950a, 153).
The same lecture was then delivered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at
the request of Yoshida Shien (1910–89). A year before, the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP)
ordered the Japanese government to close its administrative contacts with the
Ryukyu Islands. Although a small office was retained for any remaining duties, what it dealt with was redefined as “foreign affairs.” Yoshida, an official
of the prewar Okinawa Prefectural Government, assumed the directorship of
that office. According to his memoir, Higashionna’s lecture room was filled
with an air of tension. The Japanese diplomats in the audience were being
afraid that they might be purged from public service if GHQ/SCAP noticed
their interest in Okinawa (Yoshida 1979, 30–32). Yoshida published the lecture script in mimeographed form, and distributed it to politically influential
persons. The following year, Yoshida invited Higashionna again to deliver
another lecture entitled “History of Foreign Relations of Okinawa” (Higashionna 1951b). The two lectures were translated into English at Yoshida’s
office and used for lobbying to the Allied countries (Higashionna 1950b,
1951c). Among the readers of Higashionna’s booklets was George Kerr, the
American historian at the 1952 SIRI conference.
KERR’S RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
On 28 January 1952, as soon as the conference between USCAR and the Pacific Science Board had been concluded at Camp Zukeran, George Kerr set
about his history project. First, he interviewed Matayoshi Kōwa and Shimabukuro Zenpatsu (Kerr 1952a). As we have seen, Matayoshi and Shimabukuro were once colleagues in the early postwar native administration. They
stepped down from public positions by that time; Matayoshi became the
president/owner of the Ryukyu shinpō while Shimabukuro the editor-in-chief
of that newspaper. The next day, Kerr flew to Tokyo where he had arranged
a coordinated bibliographic search. The search involved looking through all
types of published literature on Ryukyu throughout the collections of the
National Diet Library and several libraries attached to Tokyo University.
Meanwhile, the GHQ/SCAP staff introduced Kerr to Yoshida Shien, who in
turn introduced him to prominent scholars of Okinawan studies in Tokyo,
History as a Mirror of Self
15
which of course included Higashionna and other members of the Okinawa
Cultural Association. One member, Higa Shunchō, was hired as a full-time
assistant and traveled as far as Kyoto and Kagoshima in search of literature
(Kerr 1952b).
Kerr met Higashionna on February 3. Higashionna’s journal entry read:
“Mr. Kerr from Stanford visited in the morning, asking my guidance on his
study of Ryukyuan history” (Higashionna 1982, 94). Kerr, on the other hand,
reported this meeting to Harold Coolidge three days later as follows: “This
most eminent authority on Ryukyu History has placed his entire library at the
service of the Project. . . . He agrees, furthermore, to advise and check upon
results as the project develops” (Kerr 1952b). Higashionna’s private collection had priceless value; it included his transcripts of historical documents
that were later lost forever during the war. Of note is that Kerr noticed the
debate between Higashionna and Shimabukuro. He continued: “This cooperation does not commit Project members to restrict themselves to consultation with Dr. Higashionna alone, though there will be fine points of protocol
in dealing with specialists of whom the old scholar is critical” (Kerr 1952b).
On March 17, after a quick return trip to California to arrange for assistants to undertake bibliographic searches at the Universities of Hawaii,
California (Berkley) and Stanford, Kerr returned to Okinawa to accomplish
a two-month-long on-site survey. He circulated a list of enquiries among
the Ryukyu Cultural Affairs Association. A general discussion meeting was
held on April 6 during which Kerr planned his itinerary based on exchanges
with Shimabukuro, Matayoshi and other members of the association. In a
memorandum dated ten days later, Kerr reported to the executive officer of
USCAR that “the readiness to help . . . has seemed at times to reach an emotional intensity. This might be interpreted as an eager grasping at opportunity
to reconstruct local cultural life, a matter of profound concern to local pride
and self-respect” (Kerr 1952c). Thus, educated Okinawans in both cities
welcomed Kerr’s history project. If, however, Tokyo and Naha had different
views, as they in fact had, Kerr had to choose one.
In the progress report submitted to the Pacific Science Board while closing
his field survey on May 20, Kerr mentioned the problematic “pre-war conditions affecting Japanese scholarship” on Ryukyuan history; that is, “limitations of traditional training or of State policy made it difficult for Japanese
scholars to write with complete freedom concerning Japanese actions and
policies in a territory so recently acquired” (Kerr 1952d, 2). It is not clear
whether Kerr’s “Japanese scholars” were meant to include Higashionna and
other Okinawans in Tokyo. Considering, however, that other Japanese scholars could scarcely compete with those Okinawan colleagues in the academic
field of Ryukyuan studies, Kerr’s “Japanese scholars” could be taken as
16
Chapter One
referring to both Okinawan and mainland scholars in Tokyo. Kerr also urged
caution against the contemporary activities of the Japanese government and
the Japanese media. About a month before (April 28), Japan had regained
full independence. With the new freedom of speech, “an increase may be
expected . . . in the number and character of appeals . . . which will be made
to the Ryukyuan people to remind them and encourage them to think of themselves as Japanese subjects ultimately due to return to full Japanese control”
(Kerr 1952d, 12). The activities of the Ryukyu sub-section in the Foreign
Ministry, that is, Yoshida’s office, which prepared Higashionna’s booklets,
were a noticeable case of such reminders and encouragement.
In contrast, Kerr observed that Okinawans in Okinawa were searching
for “their own history” and were developing the theme that “Okinawa has
always been sacrificed to Japanese interests” (Kerr 1952d, 12). They cited
as evidence of that sacrifice the Satsuma invasion of 1609 and subsequent
economic domination of the Ryukyus, the Meiji government’s unilateral abolition of the Ryukyuan state in 1879 as a measure to secure the southern frontier, as well as the 57,000 civilians killed during the Battle of Okinawa.8 An
alternative narrative that this emergent view would provide “can be expected
to strengthen the position of the conservative leaders who are cooperating
with the U. S. Civil Administration” (Kerr 1952d, 12). At the opposite end
of the political spectrum, the “local Communists” sought to embarrass both
those conservative leaders and the American administration. They overemphasized the history of the Ryukyus in modern times, that is, Okinawa within
the Japanese state. Then, a “popular understanding of Ryukyu’s long history
as a separate people,” Kerr expected, “would modify arguments for ‘reunion’
with Japan” (Kerr 1952d, 12).
Having spent the summer of 1952 in Tokyo to direct bibliographic research,9 Kerr went back to California to write up the final report, Ryukyu:
Kingdom and Province before 1945 (Kerr 1953). In this general history of the
Ryukyus, Kerr described Shō Jōken as a man who lacked great initiative and
worked under the influence of Japan. Firstly, Chancellor Shō, in tackling economic problems, resorted to sumptuary laws and social regulations. The shogunate in Yedo was also struggling against economic difficulties at that time.
Kerr inferred that Shō had been inspired by Yedo and had followed the shogun’s measures. Those measures were not successful in Japan, neither were
the borrowed measures in the Ryukyus (Kerr 1953, 82, 99). Secondly, when
Kerr touched on Shō’s attempts to reduce the influence of native Ryukyuan
religion, he referred to Shō’s intention of increasing Japanese influence, and
made insinuations about Satsuma’s move behind the scenes. These attempts,
as we have seen, included an attempt to abolish the royal pilgrimage to the
ancestral islet; however, Kerr did not mention Shō’s intention thereby of
History as a Mirror of Self
17
reducing the administrative budget (Kerr 1953, 98). Kerr kept silent about
Shō’s selfless determination to reform the kingdom’s administration, even
though Higashionna loudly praised him for it (Higashionna 1950 a, 179–181).
If Shimabukuro had received Kerr’s final report, he would have read it favorably (Shimabukuro died in November 1953, and probably had no chance
to get a hold of it). Higashionna, one may expect, must have had a different
reaction to the report, as Kerr’s description almost entirely dismissed Higashionna’s interpretation of Shō’s achievements. Higashionna surely received
Kerr’s manuscript, finished reading it and sent it to Yoshida Shien on 8 August 1953 (Higashionna 1982, 99), but no immediate reaction was recorded.
Of note, however, is that contrary to expectations, Higashionna introduced
Kerr’s observation in support of his own argument. The mid-1950s saw an
increasing deterioration in relations between the American forces and the
islanders due to compulsory land expropriations. In “Okinawa: Past and Present (Okinawa konjaku),” a yearlong series of short essays on the Okinawa
problem, Higashionna quoted from Kerr’s introduction to his 1953 report:
The people of Ryukyu are much more eager to be recognized and accepted as
“Japanese,” than the people of Japan are ready or eager to claim them without
reservation. . . . Japan is prepared to use the Ryukyus in any way to gain advantage for Tokyo: it is ill-prepared to make sacrifices for the island people
(Higashionna 1958, 341–342, 403; Kerr 1953, ii).
In the context in which Higashionna quoted these lines, he was concerned
about the lack of serious attention on the part of the mainlanders to the issue
of an Okinawan reversion to Japan. According to Higashionna, it was not new
at all that “faithless politics” was conducted only to save vain appearances.
“We have always regretted,” Higashionna continued, that “few politicians
truly stood on the side of Okinawa and worked for [the benefit of] it” (Higashionna 1958, 403).
This was an ironic twist in the course of transmission of a particular historical view. The axiom “Okinawa has always been sacrificed to Japanese
interests” originally appeared among postwar Okinawan leaders such as
Shimabukuro and Matayoshi. They narrowly survived the Battle of Okinawa,
and committed themselves to the reconstruction of the island, which was
then isolated from Japanese influence. Those experiences awakened postwar
Okinawan leaders to the hitherto unexpressed view on the past relationship
between their island and Japan. Their view attracted Kerr’s attention. An alternative narrative that Kerr developed therefrom was expected to strengthen
the postwar Okinawa leaders who cooperated with USCAR. However, when
Higashionna appropriated the axiom, he adopted an almost opposite political
18
Chapter One
outlook: escaping from American control and going back to Japanese administration. In other words, the continuing American administration of the
islands could be taken as yet another case of Japanese sacrifice of Okinawa.
That interpretation seems to have lain in a blind spot of Americans like Kerr.
According to Kerr, the American forces continued to stay in Okinawa
not to dominate this foreign territory but only to maintain neutrality in the
Western Pacific. In this context, he referred to a historical precedent, Commodore Perry’s visit to Ryukyu in 1853. Although Kerr later suspected Perry
of harboring military ambitions, he thought it worth re-examining “Perry’s
suggestions for an internationalized port” on Okinawa which would be open
to all nations (Kerr 1945, 100). Kerr published that view at the very moment when American and Japanese forces were struggling for the island of
Okinawa. That projection of the first American occupation of Okinawa onto
the second became more explicit in the final version of Kerr’s Ryukyuan history (Kerr 1958, 9).10 Such projection occurred neither to Shimabukuro nor
to Higashionna. In this sense, whether or not Kerr supported the American
strategic policy, he also saw his predecessor in Ryukyuan history.
CONCLUSION
In postwar Okinawa, historiography became a contentious space in which
people with competing historical accounts of the islands’ past tried to get an
edge in the ongoing negotiations over the sovereignty of the Ryukyu Islands.
Beyond such immediate concerns over a political agenda, there is another
dimension in which postwar Okinawan historiography should be discussed.
When a history of the Kingdom was written for the first time by Ryukyuans themselves in 1650, the author Shō Jōken gave it the title A Mirror for the
Reign of Chuˉzan [i.e., the Kingdom of Ryukyu] (Chuˉzan Seikan). In its preface, Shō quoted from Shijing (Book of Odes) the maxim, “Yin’s lessons were
not to be found far away but lay in the preceding Xia dynasty.” By “Mirror,”
Shō meant a negative exemplar, a model for what not to do. The fatal fault
would have been over Sinicization of the kingdom and a reckless challenge
to Satsuma, which had been led by Sinophile leaders. About three and a half
centuries later, Okinawa underwent another defeat and foreign occupation.
That second defeat and its subsequent occupation reminded islanders of the
years after the Satsuma invasion, and they sought explanations about how
their predecessors had coped with such difficulties, a model for what to do.
Shō, who had set up a “Mirror,” now became a “mirror” himself.
The mirror, however, has another meaning: a surface of glass that reflects
the image of a person who looks into it. Higashionna’s conviction that the
Okinawans were Japanese was so firm that he never showed himself to be
History as a Mirror of Self
19
troubled by any doubt as to whether they actually were. When Higashionna
praised Shō for his adamant adherence to Japanization policy, Higashionna
was seeing his own consistency in the person of Shō. In contrast, Shimabukuro’s Shō was not a man of strong will. His Shō conciliated the conqueror
and thereby managed to find a way to let his fellow islanders live less miserable lives. These attitudes more or less reflected on Shimabukuro’s experiences in the realm of native administration under the American occupation.
Just as Higashionna and Shimabukuro took Ryukyuan history as the mirror in
looking for the future, those who write theirs in the twenty-first century will
in turn take Higashionna, Shimabukuro and possibly Kerr as yet another mirror. If, however, history as a mirror also means reflective images in that way,
their successors will be required to recognize fully that they may be catching
sight of themselves.
NOTES
1. Anthony Jenkins (Jenkins 2001), who catalogued the George Kerr Papers now
at Okinawa Prefectural Archive, wrote a concise introduction of Kerr’s Ryukyuan
history. I should like here to acknowledge my debt to Professor Jenkins, who kindly
read through a draft of this chapter and offered many useful comments.
2. The surnames Shimabukuro and Higashionna are Shimabuku and Higaonna in
Ryukyuan, respectively. As Kerr’s use of these names was inconsistent, I use their
more common Japanese names in this chapter for the sake of consistency. For the
same reason, I spell Iha instead of Ifa though he himself had definite preference for
the latter.
3. Sai On was a tutor of prince Shō Kei, and continued to deliver guidance after
the latter was enthroned at the age of thirteen. Sai remained in that uniquely powerful
position, kokushi (literally, “the tutor of the country”), for about forty years until Shō
Kei’s death.
4. Yonaha Jun points out that Iha actually read Shō’s text in a way that he could
extract the advocacy of common ancestry (Yonaha 2009: 172). This suggests that
Shimabukuro’s disagreement with Iha and his debate with Higashionna, which we
will see in the following section, were all based on Iha’s misleading construction.
5. In the late 1980s, Tasato Osamu paid attention to Higashionna’s highly politicized interpretation of Shō Jōken’s policies and Shimabukuro’s refutation of it
(Tasato 1988). This topic was later taken up and fully reviewed by Yakabi Osamu
(Yakabi 2010, 179–185). This section owes much to these studies.
6. Haneji is the Japanese surname of Shō Jōken.
7. Takara Kurayoshi (1989b) minutely examines the process through which Shō
assumed the chancellorship, and concludes that Shō fully prepared the “scenario” of
his administrative reforms well in advance and was thereby able to catch promptly a
chance to play it out.
20
Chapter One
8. According to the more recent data collected by Okinawa prefectural government, the number of Okinawan civilians killed during the battle was around 94,000.
In addition, there were 28,228 Okinawans who were in service and killed, 65,908
mainland Japanese war dead (mostly the military), and 12,520 American war dead.
9. This bibliographical research eventually located some 3,000 titles dealing with
Ryukyuan affairs (Higa 1962).
10. Elsewhere in the same book (Kerr 1958, 302), Kerr introduced “Perry’s Grand
Design” with reference to the concept of “residual sovereignty.” Although Kerr used
the concept in relation to Taiwan, not to Okinawa, his application of the concept
which was spotlighted in the 1951 peace treaty, to the mid-nineteenth-century strategic thinking also exemplifies Kerr’s projection (see Sensui 2010).
Chapter Two
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
Okinawan Public Health Nurses
in U.S.-Occupied Okinawa
Asako Masubuchi
The prominent Okinawan writer Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, well known for his
Akutagawa Award winning novel Cocktail Party, wrote yet another piece
in 1955, which appeared serially in a local newspaper Ryūkyū shinpō.1 Set
in a camptown, Koza, the novel Shiroi kisetsu (White Season) depicts various characters whose lives are closely connected to the U.S. military bases,
including prostitutes, a tuberculosis patient, A-sign bar hostesses, and a local
politician who made money by running bars and shops in the camptown.
The story is told from the perspective of two protagonists, the doctor Yamanouchi Shunsuke, who left Okinawa before the war with his family, and just
returned to the island upon his graduation from a medical school in Nagasaki,
and Tōyama Kyōko, a public health nurse working at the Koza public health
center (Ōshiro 1976). As a literary critic Kano Masanao insightfully points
out, this novel captures the reality of people living under the U.S. occupation
in the way that the two medical practitioners, Yamanouchi and Tōyama, try
to diagnose the “disease” of U.S.-occupied Okinawan society (Kano 2008,
246). While Yamanouchi shies away from looking the rapid transformation
of Okinawa becoming the ostentatious camptown, nostalgically lamenting the
loss of “good old Okinawa,” Tōyama cannot help but face up to the reality
of Okinawan society through her everyday duties as a public health nurse.
In many ways, the two contrasting characters in Shiroi kisetsu represent
the socio-economic situation of Okinawa in the 1950s veraciously. The establishment of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands
(USCAR) in 1950, together with a local government, the Government of the
Ryukyu Islands (GRI) in 1952, enabled the United States to retain stable and
planned military control over the islands of the Ryukyu on a long-term basis.
Meanwhile, local elites and politicians began seeking Okinawan autonomy,
even if it was limited. Some claimed independence of the Ryukyu Islands
21
22
Chapter Two
with their ethnic identity as Okinawans at the core, while others sought to
utilize social resources and humanitarian aid provided by USCAR and the
U.S. government for survival under the military occupation (Toriyama 2013,
143). Overall, this was the moment when the social structure of postwar Okinawa began taking shape with the absolute presence of U.S. military bases at
the core (Toriyama 2013, 7). Under these circumstances, public health nurses
like Tōyama were experiencing vividly ambivalent consequences of the U.S.
militarization on Okinawan society. Introduced by USCAR initially for the
purpose of protecting American soldiers from unhealthy local environment
and infectious diseases, public health nurses received professional training
under the guidance of American medical specialists. Some of them further
travelled to Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Hawaii, and the U.S. mainland
to receive technical training (Nihon Kango Kyōkai 1982). In this sense, they
gained social and spatial mobility and the sense of autonomy because of the
U.S. occupation. Paradoxically, the nurses could comprehend the potential
effects of imperial and military violence precisely because of their dealings
with their patients’ “diseases,” which were unequivocally the effects of the
precarious status of Okinawa being an intersection of the U.S. and Japanese
empires. Among the important questions to ask in order to untangle these historical paradoxes are: how did they experience the reality of the military occupation through the act of nursing? How could we understand their agency
and subjectivity in the context of the U.S. empire? And more fundamentally,
what does it mean to protect life and provide care under the absolute presence
of militarism?
This chapter aims to intervene in the existing discussions of militarism,
imperialism, and gender in U.S.-occupied Okinawa by exploring the lived
experiences of Okinawan public health nurses. Although scholars in the field
of Okinawan Studies have generated a wide range of discussions pertaining
to the U.S. occupation, public health nurses in occupied Okinawa have not
been fully studied except for a few essays written by medical professionals.2
In part, the difficulty of problematizing their activities in a socio-historical
perspective stems from the dominant narratives of Okinawan Studies, which
tend to portray Okinawans in general, Okinawan women in particular, either
as victims or resisters. Such a framework itself is quite effective to comprehend the oppressive power structure under the U.S. occupation, and to reveal
the history of people who have struggled against military dominance. However, as Mire Koikari points out, this binary framework obscures the ways
in which the U.S. military occupation simultaneously facilitated women’s
varied and contradictory expressions of agency, where “they often participate
in and reinforce the dominant working of power” (Koikari 2015, 17). The
binary framework would prove to be inadequate when analyzing the women
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
23
who took on the intensively paradoxical and ambivalent positions of public
health nurses. For their state-mandated roles arrogate to them the obligations
of working intimately with the USCAR official in order to control diseases,
as well as the responsibilities of improving the sanitary condition in Okinawa
hastily. The chapter thus attempts to divulge the irreducibly complicated and
unpredictable nature of their everyday experience, onto which the binary notion of victim and collaborators can never be categorically applied without
repressing the historical gravity of the everyday life.
While examining the contradictory expressions of the agency of public
health nurses, this chapter also situates public health nursing system in occupied Okinawa within a broader context of U.S. Cold War politics. As
Marcos Cueto reveals, promoting international health increasingly became
an important strategy for the United States to compete with the Soviet Union,
as the Cold War rhetoric shifted from direct military confrontation to an emphasis on science and technology (Cueto 2007, 5). In addition, the notion of
domesticity played a significant role in Cold War U.S. expansionism in Asia
and the Pacific (Koikari 2015, 9). Following Amy Kaplan’s notion of “manifest domesticity,” Koikari argues that women’s engagement in the project of
homemaking in occupied Okinawa became a significant apparatus to “turn
their homes into a focal site of imperial politics” (Koikari 2015, 7). In this
sense, public health nurses should be understood as key agents of American
Cold War politics, as they disseminated scientific knowledge of health and
domesticity, and were supposed to embody American notions of liberalism
and femininity through nursing education and daily practice of home visiting and providing health care. Okinawan public health nurses were never
passive agents, however. Most of the first group of public health nurses had
educational background and nursing experiences before and during the war in
imperial Japan. This inter-imperial experience compelled them into constant
negotiation with USCAR officials over the terms and procedures for nursing. Facing with actual situations in each community, they also managed to
expand the area of public health services beyond the USCAR’s initial scope
in order to meet the needs of Okinawan people in general. To quote Michel
de Certeau, their behavior can be described as “tactics,” by which one can
maneuver “within the enemy’s field of vision,” without leaving the place
where one has no choice but to live (de Certeau 1995, 32). With “tactics,”
de Certeau argues, one establishes a degree of plurality and creativity, drawing unexpected results from one’s situation (de Certeau 1995, 30). Similarly,
with the term “the politics of living,” Yen Le Espiritu illustrates how Vietnamese refugees sought to generate viable life and make the refugee camp a
“home” through everyday practices: “abject spaces can also become ‘spaces
of politics’ when camp dwellers enact themselves ‘as political by exercising
24
Chapter Two
rights that they do not have’; in so doing, they turn bare life into political
life” (Espiritu 2014, 76). By contextualizing the experiences of Okinawan
public health nurses within Cold War U.S. geopolitics, the pages follow explore nursing and nursing education in occupied Okinawa as the site where
Okinawan women consciously or unconsciously played a part in Cold War
U.S. expansionism, but nonetheless sought for “tactics” to generate viable life
under military domination.
“PROFESSIONALIZATION” OF OKINAWAN NURSES
When the fierce twelve-week ground battle of Okinawa—which killed about
one fourth of the civilian population of the islands—ended in June 1945, no
medical facility was left standing. There was also a severe shortage of medical practitioners, as many of them had been killed in the war or had gone to
mainland Japan. While there were 182 Okinawan doctors and dentists registered in Okinawa in 1941, only 64 doctors remained in the islands at the end
of the war (Sakihara et al. 1998, 57). At the end of the war, malaria, filariasis
and dengue fever were widespread, and approximately 35 percent of the population suffered from tuberculosis (Fisch 2004, 50). Although malaria gradually decreased as the U.S. forces immediately launched a massive campaign
to control insect-borne diseases as soon as they landed on the islands (Fisch
2004, 50), venereal diseases began increasing especially after the outbreak of
the Korean War in June 1950, in which Okinawa served as a forward base for
U.S. soldiers dispatched to the battlefield of Korea. In order to tackle with the
situation, USCAR established public health centers, and began training public
health nurses. At the end of 1949, a group of Okinawan nurse leaders were
sent by USCAR to the Institute of Public Health in Tokyo. Many of them had
been trained as professional nurses under the pre-war Japanese medical system. However, after the war, their nursing licenses were suspended, and they
had to go through training once again to become public health nurses under
the U.S. occupation (T. Kinjō 2001, 249–282). Established in 1938 through
the Rockefeller Foundation’s grants, the Institute of Public Health provided
well-trained nurses who were to become leaders of nursing development
under the GHQ in postwar period (Takahashi 2004, 157). While Okinawan
nurses were studying in Tokyo, USCAR appointed two American nurses,
Josephine Hobbs Kaser and Juanita A. Watterworth, as counselors to introduce the public health nurse system to Okinawa. Kaser had served as a U.S.
Army nurse between 1944 and 1945 on the United States Army Hospital Ship
Marigold, which was stationed in the South Pacific. With the beginning of the
occupation of Japan, she became the administrator for the Japanese national
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
25
training program for public health nurses held at the Institute of Public Health
(UTA, Kaser Collection). Graduating from University of Oregon, Watterworth had served as a public health nurse educator in the Shikoku Regional
Military Government Team before she came to Okinawa, where she initiated
the public health nurse stationing system with the assistance of local doctors
and nurses until 1949 (Kimura 2012, 50–53). According to Gleich-Anthony,
the Military Government nurses played an important role not only in protecting the health of the U.S. troops, but also in “democratizing” Japanese
women through nursing education (Gleich-Anthony 2007). With the guidance of these two women, USCAR proclaimed ordinances No. 35 and 36
in 1951 to set up a public health nurse system. The ordinances introduced
the title “kōshū eisei kangofu (Public Health Nurses)” for the first time, and
defined the duties and qualifications of public health nurses. In the same
year, Kaser and Watterworth initiated courses to train public health nurses.
Participants applied for the courses through the recommendation of the head
nurses of municipal hospitals and clinics. Many women who had nursing
licenses came from all over the islands to seek for a new job opportunity
(OPA0000012416). In the course, participants had theoretical education and
practical training. After completing a one-year training course, they received
the license of public health nurses and were posted to public health centers or
substations in remote islands and areas. This training course later transformed
into the nursing school, which was established in 1955.
For most of the Okinawan nurses, the U.S.-promoted sense of “professionalism” in nursing education seemed to be one of the most significant divergences from the prewar understanding of the field, in which nurses were subordinate to their superiors, doctors, organizations, and the state. At the same
time, they were expected to embody the ideal of the “good housewife and
wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo). As Takahashi illustrates, the Japanese term for
public health nurses, “hokenfu,” which has been used in mainland Japan from
the prewar period up to present, well represents this situation. The word hokenfu literally means “public health women,” and does not include a Chinese
character referring either to “medicine” or “nurse” (Takahashi 2004, 157). It
is not a coincidence that the Japanese Red Cross, the leading institution of
Japanese nursing education since its establishment in 1887, adopted Florence
Nightingale as a perfect symbol of nursing because she was recognized not
only as a pioneer of professional nursing, but also as a great exemplar of
female virtues (Takahashi 2004, 161–163). Kinjō Kiyomatsu, one of the first
Okinawan medical doctors, also remembered that in prewar Okinawa general
practitioners usually employed ordinary girls and trained them to be assistants
(K. Kinjō 1961, 13). This is partly because those who wanted to become professional nurses (and doctors) had to go outside of Okinawa since there was
26
Chapter Two
no facility for medical education on the islands. Even after graduation, as the
war progressed, many of them were mobilized as military nurses (Okinawaken Hokenfuchō-kai 1994, 207). Thus, while “professional nurses” worked
actively with the imperial Japanese army on the front lines, the professional
boundary of nursing became obscured on the home front, transforming the
nursing work “from a career based on expertise into a female form of civilian
contribution to the war effort with much less emphasis upon nursing skills
and knowledge” (Takahashi 2004, 163).
In occupied Okinawa, not only did Kaser and Watterworth teach Okinawan
women medical knowledge, but also attempted to nurture their confidence
and pride to work as professional nurses. Symbolically, the term “kōshū eisei
kangofu,” instead of “hokenfu,” was adopted in occupied Okinawa, which is
direct translation from the English word “public health nurse” and emphasizes expertise for professional nurses. Okinawan people began calling public
health nurses “kōkan-san,” an abbreviation for “kōshū eisei kangofu,” as
they became more familiar with their presence in the community. Yonahara
Setsuko, one of the participants in the training course, still remembered that
Kaser kept emphasizing the importance of “professionalism”:
In order to get rid of traditional understandings that regarded nurses as subordinates to doctors, Kaser and Watterworth gave us as many opportunities as
possible to express our own opinions in public, such as conferences or schools.
This greatly contributed to promoting the social position of public health nurses,
and strengthening our pride and confidence as public health nurses (Yonahara
1983, 27).
The distinctive uniform of public health nurses, brand-new white shirts and
navy-blue two-piece suits with black culottes, also helped them to have the
sense of professionalism and pride (T. Kinjō 2001, 127–129). Kaser collected
funding from the American military wives’ associations such as International
Women’s Club, and made uniforms for public health nurses. Kinjō Taeko,
the first director of the Okinawan public health nurse school, recalled that
Kaser insisted that the uniform must be “modern style” because “it can be
easily recognized by anyone, it will make you feel authentic, and give you
confidence as a public health nurse” (Kinjō interview, OPA0000012416).
Together with the uniforms, bicycles were also donated by military wives and
became invaluable vehicles especially for those nurses who were in charge
of remote islands and areas to go around and visit homes in the community,
since there was often little means of transportation. As most of public health
nurses never rode bicycles, they learned how to ride them every day after
class at the public health nurse school (Yona et al. 1967, 20–21). Beyond the
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
27
mere practical purpose, bicycles became the symbol of “kōkan-san.” Yonahara recalled the memory of the public health nurses’ bicycles as follows:
When I rode a red bicycle onto the school grounds, children gathered around
me with curious eyes. As women rarely rode bicycles in those days, bicycles
were quite effective tools to catch people’s attention, publicizing the activities
of public health nurses (Yonahara 1983, 20–21).
Thus, uniforms and bikes not only enhanced professional consciousness
among public health nurses, but also symbolized their mobility and social
authority.
In addition to professionalism, American public health nurse consultants
repeatedly emphasized the importance of serving the community. In the training course, participants had to memorize 12 principles that were basis of public health nursing. The first principle stated, “Before you start working, you
have to know what the community’s needs are, and plan your public health
activities based on the needs” (T. Kinjō 2001, 33). Barbara Shay, another
public health nurse consultant for USCAR, further elaborated on the role of
public health nurses in the community in the following remarks presented at
the graduate ceremony of the public health nursing school:
Never forget that public health is not only your problem but the community’s
problem. Let it be a common objective of both yourselves and the community.
Use constantly your enthusiasm and good relationships with people as a means
of inspiring them toward improvement in the health and welfare of their community and the Ryukyus (NDL USCAR 44115–44119, News Release March
10, 1962).
Following the lesson of American consultants, Kinjō similarly stressed the
importance for public health nurses to serve the community (chi-iki), suggesting that public health nurses build stable and close relationships with local
administrators and social workers in each community so that they could look
over the community as a whole (T. Kinjō 2001, 28). In this way, they played
a significant role in not only improving the hygiene of the population, but
also rebuilding the local community. Yonahara clearly stated that the most
important thing that she learned from Kaser was the sense of professionalism
and dedication to the community, and called this kōkan damashii (the spirit
of a public health nurse) (Yonahara 1983).
Nonetheless, Okinawan public health nurses were not always willing to accept American-style nursing, especially in the beginning. For example, Kinjō
Taeko expressed in her memoir her dissatisfaction with Watterworth.
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Chapter Two
In those days [in the 1950s], there was a huge gap between USCAR and us in
the way each side tried to promote public health. We were dissatisfied with them
[USCAR officials], as their public health policies were quite different from what
had been administered on mainland Japan. Nevertheless, Mrs. Watterworth
aggressively wielded her power to make us follow her. I was the one with the
most defiant attitude, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I rebutted her (T.
Kinjō 2001, 267).
In part, Kinjō’s antipathy against Watterworth reflects her sense of pride
from her prewar and wartime experience as a military nurse. Educated by the
Japanese Red Cross, Kinjō was dispatched to the Japanese Red Cross Hospital at Dalian, Manchuria in 1938, and then moved to Harbin to work for an
army hospital until she returned to Okinawa in 1943. She particularly seemed
to have a strong sense of serving the state and the emperor during the war.
Kinjō frankly confessed in her memoir that as a military nurse, she glorified
the war just as soldiers did, and was willing to die for the emperor (T. Kinjō
2001, 257). Having the experience of serving for the Imperial Japanese Army,
Kinjō was particularly sensitive to differences in the progress of public health
in mainland Japan and U.S.-occupied Okinawa. For example, she wrote an
article in 1955 for a public-health-nurse publication, upon returning from her
one-year training at the Institute of Public Health in Tokyo. In the article,
she deplored the apathy of Okinawan society and claimed that while the U.S.
occupation did contribute to the improvement of public health in Okinawa,
Okinawan public health nurses should now stop imitating America in order to
reach the same standard of public health as that in mainland Japan (T. Kinjō
2001, 188). Moreover, she felt uncomfortable with the fact that the primary
purpose for USCAR to establish a public health nurse system was not to protect Okinawan people, but to protect U.S. soldiers from prostitutes infected
by venereal diseases and indigenous diseases (T. Kinjō 2001, 265). Indeed,
unlike the occupation of Japan, where the emphasis on demilitarization and
rehabilitation led to the systematic and large-scale reform of public health and
welfare, the military took priority over all other things in occupied Okinawa.
As a consequence, public health in Okinawa centered on the U.S. military
forces’ primary concern, and VD control became one of the primary duties
for public health nurses in Okinawa, especially those who served for health
centers located in camptowns (Sugiyama 1995). At the height of the Vietnam
War in the 1960s, over 20,000 patients visited the VD clinic at Koza Health
Center in a year, and 90 per cent of them were related to the U.S. bases, either
people working inside the bases, or regularly having contact with the U.S.
military personnel. VD clinics were established in Koza Health Center and
Naha Health Center to reduce unnecessary contact between VD patients and
other patients (Uezu 1967, 147). The clinic not only provided medical treat-
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
29
ment for venereal disease patients, but also provided public health educations
so that those patients would not further disseminate the disease. VD control
was not only conducted inside health centers. Just like VD control in any
other camptowns, one of the important concerns in VD control is to track a
source and route of infection. Especially in the early 1950s, Okinawan public
health nurses frequently visited the camptowns and tested prostitutes to detect
the source of infection (Uehara 1981, 88).
In commemorative publications, public health nurses including Kinjō, who
were in charge of VD control, often expressed ambivalent feelings they had
toward VD control. This is partly because of the fact that they noticed the
menace of tuberculosis and malaria, which rapidly spread among residents
in the 1950s as bigger and more immediate public health threats than VD.
Indeed, among the home-visit cases that public health nurses dealt with in
1952, 46 per cent were tuberculosis patients and 20 per cent were infectious
disease patients, whereas VD patients only consisted 2.4 per cent (T. Kinjō
2001, 131).
In addition to the actual necessity, however, public health nurses seemed
to dissociate their duties from VD control. For instance, Chiyo Uehara, a
public health nurse at the Naha Health Center, described her shocking encounter with prostitutes. In 1952, she visited a brothel run by a thirty-year-old
man (Uehara 1981, 88–90). The room was packed with women sleeping on
beds originally used in field hospitals. Some of them had lost every means
to live but to sell their bodies, while others were brought without knowing
anything about their planned fate. Uehara described prostitutes as “women
who embody the defeat in war (haisen no on-na tachi),” expressing a pent-up
anger both at U.S. soldiers who “bought” those women and at the Okinawan
man who ran the brothel. Compared to male doctors who often described
prostitutes as mere strangers or even betrayers, Uehara was obviously more
sympathetic to the prostitutes. At the same time, however, Uehara felt “full
of shame and miserable” when she was waiting outside of the prostitutes’
room until G.I. came out so that she could treat the prostitutes. Uehara further
writes, “I could only put up with this kind of job because it was a part of my
duties as a public health nurse” (Uehara 1981, 90). Thus, VD control simultaneously threatened and reinforced public health nurses’ sense of femininity
and professionalism. Katherine Moon reveals that in the U.S. military occupations, VD control played a significant role not only in regulating physical
contact between the U.S. personnel and local prostitutes, but also in promoting gendered notions of femininity and masculinity, weakness and strength,
and conquered and conqueror (Moon 1997). The above example shows that
VD control in U.S.-occupied Okinawa redraws class and gender boundaries
among Okinawan women, separating those who could become “good wives
30
Chapter Two
and wise mothers” from “women who embody defeat in war.” Kinjō felt
uneasiness to VD control, especially because she repeatedly emphasized the
moral ideals of femininity and motherhood in public health nursing. Having Florence Nightingale as her most respected model, she clearly states her
motto in her autobiography and elsewhere, “to be a good nurse, you should be
a good woman, and to be a good woman, you should be a good person” (T.
Kinjō 2001, 180). By “a good woman,” Kinjō meant a woman who was approachable for anyone and who could deeply sympathize with others’ physical and mental suffering. She apparently drew this motto from her prewar and
wartime experience of serving for the Japanese Red Cross as a military nurse.
In sum, the U.S.-led public health nursing education, which in part aimed to
“liberate” Okinawan women from male-dominant militarism, did not replace,
but rather reinforced Okinawan public health nurses’ prewar understanding of
gender and femininity through the act of VD control.
TECHNICAL TRAINING ACROSS THE PACIFIC
Okinawan public health nurses’ sense of professionalism was further shaped
through overseas technical training, which took place across the Asia-Pacific,
including mainland Japan, Taiwan, India, the Philippines, Hawai’i and mainland United States. During the occupation period (1945–1972), a total of 189
public health nurses were sent for technical training. 129 of them went to
mainland Japan, whereas 60 nurses went to other areas (Kōshū Eisei Kangofukai 1967, 28–29). While training trips were mostly funded by USCAR and
the U.S. government in the beginning of the occupation, international health
organizations, including the WHO, began sponsoring public health nurses’
training abroad in the 1960s. The duration of each training program ranged
from two weeks to a year, but most of them lasted for three months. Among
various training programs, two programs are worth considering in the context of the Cold War geopolitics: the National Leader Program (NLP) in the
mainland United States and programs sponsored by the Institute for Technical
Interchange (ITI) at East-West Center in Hawaii.
Three Okinawan public health nurses studied in the United States for three
months in 1957 as a part of “the Ryukyuan National Leader Program.” Beginning in 1950, the National Leader Program in Okinawa was led by USCAR
and U.S. Department of Army, and sponsored by the GARIOA (Government
Appropriation for Relief in Occupied Area) Fund. A total of approximately
400 Okinawan professionals with higher education were dispatched to the
United States as “national leaders” to observe advanced technology and
knowledge of respective fields, and were supposed to play central roles in
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
31
developing Okinawan society once they returned (Tomiyama 2015, 19).
However, with a relatively short time period (ninety days) and limited English proficiency among participants, NLP emphasized more letting Okinawan
elites know the American way of life, so that the participants could contribute
to promoting “Ryukyuan-American friendship.” Indeed, the NLP was more
concerned with the reeducation of those who were skeptical with the presence
of the United States, and furthermore with the maintenance of the positive
images of the U.S. for those who were already “pro-America” (Tomiyama
2015, 20).
USCAR began planning NLP for public health nurses in the early summer of 1956. The project was designed to enable key GRI nursing officials to “observe modern methods of teaching and practice in the fields of
public health nursing and midwifery, as employed in a general program;
whereby, upon returning to their respective positions, these officials will
be able to broaden the concept of public health nursing and midwifery in
the Ryukyus by application of the principles observed” (OPA0000106026).
Three nurses, Madambashi Nobu, Kinjō Taeko, and Ōshiro Hiromi were
carefully selected, and departed from Okinawa in December 1956 and arrived in Washington D.C. on January 18, 1957. For a week in D.C., they
took lectures on the basic knowledge of the United States, such as American
customs, physical and economic geography, religion, civil liberties, and
economic problems. They also watched government films titled “Meet your
Federal Government,” “Hoover Dam,” and “America the Beautiful.” Then,
accompanied by an interpreter-escort, Grace Yokouchi, they toured around
the United States including Lansing (Michigan), New York, Richmond (Virginia), Atlanta, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, visiting medical
institutions in each place. The letters from Yokouchi to Col. Norman D.
King, Chief of Public Affairs Division, Department of Army, describes
what Okinawan nurses learned from NLP: “Their experiences in the East
have given enough information and they are now better prepared to see and
evaluate their observations as they are more related because they are much
more accustomed to American ways” (Yokouchi 1957, OPA0000106026).
Yokouchi was particularly impressed at how Kinjō Taeko, who initially felt
unconformable with USCAR officials as discussed above, but changed her
impression toward Americans through NLP:
Perhaps, I should tell you that Kinjo said to one of the Americans, “Even if I
didn’t learn anything, I have learned a lot about Americans that I didn’t know
before, and I say with confidence that I can trust Americans completely. Skepticism I had about them, distrust or lack of complete confidence that were in me
have been wiped away and I am going back to Okinawa ready to tell everybody
that America and Americans are friends” (Yokouchi 1957, OPA0000106026).
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Chapter Two
It is unknown to what extent NLP really played a part in changing Kinjō’s
understanding of Americans and American nursing, nor was it clear how
precisely Yokouchi conveyed what Kinjō had really said, given the fact that
the letter was written for a colonel in Department of Army who was in charge
of NLP. Nevertheless, Kinjō seemed to feel more connected to American
nursing supervisors, Watterworth and Kaser, after she returned to Okinawa.
When Watterworth left Okinawa in 1960, Kinjō expressed her great respect
and appreciation to her: “How can I forget the American woman who truly
loved and guided Okinawan nurses? I own what I am today to her, not only as
a nurse but also as a person. I would call her ‘the Nightingale of Okinawa’”
(T. Kinjō 2001, 104). Madambashi Nobu, another participant of the NLP,
also mentioned the personal “traits” of American nurses, such as “willingness
of work” “sincerity” and “the desire of continually educating themselves,” as
what she learned during NLP and hoped to share with her fellow nurses back
in Okinawa (Yokouchi 1957, OPA0000106026).
Observing how well Madambashi learned through NLP, Yokouchi reported in her letter with confidence that Madambashi would be a “good representative of Okinawa,” because “she has a nice personality and shows her
good upbringing of Shuri family and I think selection of this type of a person
in the future will be credit to Okinawa” (Yokouchi 1957, OPA0000106026).
American-trained personnel like Madambashi and Kinjō, who became familiar with American-style nursing and nursing education, would prove to
be useful for USCAR as well as facilitate civil administration in Okinawa
smoothly. In fact, by the middle of the 1950s, Madambashi and Kinjō became
chief of clinical nurse and chief of public health nurse in GRI respectively
in accordance with the USCAR’s mandates, and began playing a central role
in establishing the general structure of Okinawan nurses and public health
nurses under the U.S. occupation (Kimura 2012, 200).
SERVING THE COMMUNITY
While selected public health nurses were impressed by the high standard of
American nursing, other nurses back in Okinawa were confronted by the
multitude of the harsh reality brought on by localities. Upon graduating from
a public health school, they were dispatched to public health centers in mainland Okinawa and substations in remote islands and areas. By 1970, there
were 6 public health centers and 66 substations, which covered the entire
islands of the Ryukyu (T. Kinjō 2001, 118). It was often the case that public
health nurses had to promise that they would work in remote islands and areas for a certain period of time upon graduating from a public health nursing
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
33
school, since most of them had received scholarships for nursing education
(OPA0000012416). Introduced to occupied Okinawa by Watterworth, the
public health nurse stationing system3 was designed for public health nurses
to provide health care and nursing to the people in the community while living in the same area with the people. In so doing, it enabled them to closely
engage with the people and comprehend the community’s needs. Under this
system, public health nurses were stationed in remote islands and areas in
rotation, staying in one place for approximately 2–3 years. Their daily duties included home visits to find targets of practical intervention, performing
medical acts if necessary, and instructing people about disease prevention,
maternal, and child health (Okinawa-ken Hokenfuchō kai 1994). As young
women who were fresh out of nursing schools and transferred to a strange
place alone, public health nurses often felt at a loss. For one thing, people still
knew little about public health nurses and the role of their activities in the
community at first. It can often be seen in commemorative publications that
people quite often confused public health nurses with insurance saleswomen
and expelled them from their house, because the Japanese words “health” and
“insurance” are both pronounced hoken (Teruya 1962, 46). They also had
troubles in treating patients who firmly believed in a local superstition or who
devoted themselves in a new religion, and rejected Western medicine (Sunagawa 1961, 91). In addition, governmental officials in the municipal offices,
in which most of the stationed public health nurses set up their offices, were
not always cooperative with them at first, since these officials concentrated
their efforts on reconstruction of a local community from the war, paying
little attention to the improvement of public health (Yonahara 1983, 15).
The fact that the position of public health nurses was not established in the
administration of the government of the Ryukyu Islands also embarrassed
municipal officials in that they were not sure as to what regulations public
health nurses were using while occupying the already limited space of their
office. In this way, public health nurses were placed between the ideal of
USCAR officials and the reality of a local community.
Public health nurses indeed struggled to win the trust of the people in the
community in order to fulfill their duties as the only medical authority in a respective community. Shinzato Atsuko, a former stationed public health nurse,
described how she felt when deployed in a remote island, saying that “we
had a sense that unless we do it, nobody would support. It became our mission” (Shinzato interviewed OPA0000012416). Without any support, public
health nurses took various measures to grasp the substantive situations of the
community and find targets of medical intervention accordingly. Shinzato,
for example, did so by observing the kitchens and settings during homevisiting. Other nurses watched children playing on the streets—if they spotted
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Chapter Two
someone with scabies or eczema, they visited their homes to check if their
family had any disease. Regular visits to a local cooperative store to gather
information of the residents in the community were among the nurses’ improvised tactics (Yonahara 1983, 16). Public health nurses further expanded
their activities by making use of local radio broadcasting and organizations
in the community. For example, Shinzato gathered local residents in the evening with the help of women’s association and the area chief to inform them
about tuberculosis and the necessity of immunization (Shinzato interview,
OPA0000012416). Indeed, local women’s associations (fujinkai)—many of
which were established right after the war and later incorporated into the umbrella organization, the Okinawa Fujin Rengōkai (Okinawa Women’s Federation)—played a significant role in helping public health nurses to promote
public health activities such as the cleanup campaign, improvement of kitchens and bathrooms, and maternal and child health care (Higa 1982, 156–157).
It is worth mentioning here that USCAR saw Okinawa Women’s Federation
(OWF) as a useful apparatus which could provide much assistance to U.S.
operations in Okinawa for the purpose of Cold War U.S. empire-building,
especially because OWF was regarded as “less infiltrated by leftists than any
other mass organization in the Ryukyus” (Koikari 2015, 36). It is necessary
to reconsider USCAR’s emphasis on public health nurses’ role of serving
the community in this regard. Just as Okinawan home economists played an
important role in building the “home front” of the Cold War U.S. empire in
occupied Okinawa (Koikari 2015), public health nurses actively engaged in
rebuilding local communities through health care and nursing, which in effect
helped USCAR to grasp the actual situation of Okinawan society, especially
those in remote islands and areas where the USCAR officials were not physically present. In fact, USCAR nursing counselors often attended monthly
meetings of public health nurses, which aimed for the chief nurses across the
islands to gather and discuss the problems they had in their respected communities. In one of the meetings, for example, Barbara Shay, public health
nurse consultant, made sure if public health nurses accurately grasped the real
needs of the community, and advised them how to meet their needs while
simultaneously promote new ideas of hygiene (OPA R00085521B). In this
way, public health nurses in effect served as a sort of liaison of the empire
in occupied Okinawa, through which USCAR could monitor common occurrences in the local communities.
In reality, however, public health nurses stationed in remote areas often
encountered difficulties in administering their planned activities. The most
serious concern they had was that their activities focused too much on the
treatment of tuberculosis (TB) patients, and could not do other essential public health activities such as maternal and child health care, mental diseases,
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
35
health counseling, and general hygiene education. Even though the number
of tuberculosis patients had been reduced during the war, it then began
increasing after the war, mostly due to the dreadful sanitary environment
and malnutrition. There were as many as 20,000 TB cases with 400 known
deaths in 1954. In response to the situation, the USCAR established a special
hospital for TB, the Ryukyu Research Institute of Tuberculosis in 1952. Due
to a chronic shortage of beds, however, patients were allowed to stay in the
hospital only for six months regardless of the state of a disease (Jensen report,
OPA U80800713B). As a consequence, those who were expected to recover
within a shorter period of time were hospitalized or had a surgical operation,
whereas TB patients with serious cases had to stay at home to have home
care under the supervision of public health nurses. The number of TB cases
that public health nurses dealt with began rapidly increasing in 1956, when
the tuberculosis prevention law was enacted. In 1960, 90 percent of public
health nurses’ works were related to tuberculosis, and they were even called
“kekkaku kōkan” (public health nurses of tuberculosis), associating public
health nurses exclusively with the image of tuberculosis. Because of this
association, people did not always favorably welcome public health nurses
visiting their home. In one specific case, a patient’s wife asked a public
health nurse not to wear a uniform so as her neighbors would not assume
that there was a TB patient in her family (Yonahara 1983, 32). Thus, their
distinctive uniform, which was designed to represent their professionalism
as discussed above, ironically hindered their activities. Another TB patient
also felt uncomfortable with public health nurses, as he felt that they intruded
into his private space and disciplined his behavior by giving him detailed
instructions on how to take medicine, how to cleanse tableware, and how to
limit contact with other family members (Yonahara 1983, 59). It was often
the case that a patient was past cure when she or he finally listened to public
health nurses’ advice. Seeing such cases, public health nurses expressed their
frustration at the deficiencies in the TB prevention law and the system of
public health nurses as a whole. Aragaki Setsuko, for example, felt helpless
that she just had to watch her patient die, as he could not be hospitalized due
to the lack of beds. Aragaki argued, “This is a patient who really needs to be
sent to the governmental TB institute. How can the government leave these
patients behind and force responsibility onto public health nurses in the name
of ‘homecare’? This is not at all real health care” (Aragaki 1967, 94). In a
similar way, Uza Atsuko pointed out that public health nurses’ activities were
quite often hindered by social and economic problems such as patients’ poverty, sanitary environment, and religion, which, she thought, the government
should have dealt with. Uza wrote with anger, “I feel irritated by contradictions and defects in administration of Okinawa in the way that the burden
36
Chapter Two
of unsolved social problems will end up falling on the public health nurses”
(Uza 1961, 95). Therefore, in taking care of illness of patients, they realized
the “social illness” of occupied Okinawa, caused by relentless military violence throughout the war and occupation period.
Indeed, not only public health nurses but also those who engaged in
medicine and social welfare were keenly aware of the fundamental contradictions in health-care system in U.S.-occupied Okinawa. For instance, Gakiya
Ryōichi, a professor of social work, subtly asserted that the status of occupied
Okinawa being placed outside of the Japanese jurisdiction, which is supposed
to guarantee fundamental human rights of the people, resulted in deficiencies of medicine and public health in the islands (Gakiya 1976, reprinted in
1994, 253). Neither the Japanese government nor the U.S. government took
coherent and systematic measures to improve social welfare and stabilize the
livelihood of the Okinawan inhabitants until the middle of 1960s, when the
reversion of Okinawa to Japan became an established procedure. Although
the United States and USCAR did occasionally intervene in public health and
welfare services in the Ryukyu Islands via GRI, they often did so to pacify
the resentment of the people against military violence. For example, Robert
T. Jensen, M.D, director of the Health, Education and Welfare Department
of USCAR, explicitly suggests that USCAR provide military planes and
helicopters for transportation on a scheduled basis in support of the civilian
flying medical service, not only because this would be “expedient from the
standpoint of training,” but also because “this type of public service would
do much to improve the currently embattled military public image” (Jensen
report, OPA U80800713B, 29). Therefore, public health and social welfare
services were not obstructions but unequivocally essential parts of the U.S.
military presence. The already precarious lives of the Okinawans, as the 1951
San Francisco Peace Treaty placed the population of the islands outside of the
protection of both Japanese and U.S. constitutions, were further imperiled by
the fact that they were subjected to the logic of militarism. Without having
adequate funding sources and human resources, GRI, medical practitioners,
and inhabitants bore the financial and physical burden and greater responsibility. One medical doctor dispatched from Tokyo was particularly concerned
that Okinawan public health nurses had to take care of too much work, and
did not have time to focus on their original duty, that is, preventive medicine
and nursing (Nakagawa 1967, 118). Likewise, Shinzato Yoshiichi, an Okinawan doctor, regarded it as problematic that public health nurses performed
medical acts due to the shortage of doctors especially when dealing with
tuberculosis patients, which, he thought, would blur the boundary of duties
between clinical treatment and public health services. Shinzato even warns
that “kōkan” could never become “real” public health nurses unless they
could concentrate on their own original duties (Shinzato 1967, 125).
Nursing the U.S. Occupation
37
Quite paradoxically, however, it seems that public health nurses could
develop a sense of pride and agency under such a circumstance where they
served as an only medical authority and took the initiative to rebuild the local community through public health services. Takaesu Ikuko recalls in a
commemorative publication that she matured as a person while working as
a public health nurse, when she always wished to serve for the public not
merely as a nurse, but as a member of the community (Takaesu 1967, 50).
Public health nurses’ sense of professionalism and solidarity became most
visible in 1968. In preparing for the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, the Japanese government and GRI proposed that Okinawan nurses and public health
nurses follow the Nursing Act enforced in mainland Japan. Public health
nurses immediately opposed the proposal, because the mainland act does not
specify public health nurses in the title, nor did it define their duties. In particular, they were concerned that the stationing system, which enabled them
to comprehend precisely the community’s needs across the Ryukyu Islands
including remote islands and areas, would be abandoned under the Japanese
Nursing Act (Uezu 1982, 21). Nurses and public health nurses together held
demonstrations to appeal the necessity of the public health nurse stationing
system, which was accepted in the end and the system continued after the
reversion (Ōmine 1982, 40). Kinjō Taeko, who was strongly influenced by
American nursing especially through the NLP, more explicitly expressed her
concerns that the integration of Okinawan public health nursing to the Japanese health care system would reduce the sense of autonomy of public health
nurses, which had been cultivated throughout the occupation period, and thus
also impair the quality of public health in Okinawa (T. Kinjō 2001, 213–231).
Her ambivalent attitude toward the reversion may sound exceptional, given
the social atmosphere at that time when a large number of educators and intellectuals actively participated in the so-called reversion movement. Perhaps,
for public health nurses like Kinjō, who prioritized the lives and health of the
people in the community over other things, the question was not so much one
of reversion or independence. Rather, they continuously sought for the way
to make the best of the given situation so that people could survive the reality
of life under military domination.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has traced the experiences of Okinawan public health nurses in
U.S.-occupied Ryukyu Islands. Having professional experiences as nurses or
midwives in the prewar and during the war, the first group of public health
nurses had a strong sense of duty to serve the community in general, and
to heal war-torn Okinawan people in particular. Their sincerity and selfless
38
Chapter Two
devotion undoubtedly contributed to the improvement of public health in
postwar Okinawa. However, their sense of duty sometimes ironically resonated with the logic of Cold War U.S. expansionism to train female medical
personnel, who embody American liberalism and femininity on one hand,
pacify the resentment of the people against military violence and improved
the image of U.S. forces through providing health care on the other. Indeed,
American-led nursing education and overseas training in the United States
reinforced Okinawan public health nurses’ sense of professionalism and femininity, which in fact did not conflict but rather compatible with their prewar
understanding of nursing. For USCAR, the public health nurse system was
not only necessary to regulate intimate relationship between U.S. soldiers and
local prostitutes, but also useful to comprehend the actual situation of local
society. At the same time, however, public health nurses were keenly aware
of the social diseases caused by the presence of U.S. militarism, and tried to
nurse the people suffering from the disease. Due to permanent shortage of
human resources and budget, they had to cover wide range of duties, ranging
from practicing medical treatment to organizing community meetings. The
lived experience provided a ground from which the nurses construct a sense
of agency and distinctive subjectivity, with which they could promote solidarity to fight for better, if not the best, lives of the people in the community,
turning bare life into political life even under siege.
NOTES
1. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Kōnosuke Matsushita Memorial
Foundation, which allowed me to conduct the research for this chapter.
2. Of a few exceptions, Ōmine Chieko examines the significance of the public
health nurse stationing system in Okinawa from the perspective of medical history,
arguing how effectively the system contributed to the promotion of public health in
postwar Okinawa (Ōmine 2001). Kimura Tetsuya similarly focuses on the public
health nurse stationing system, but emphasizes more on the autonomy of local nurses
than the influence of USCAR officials in initiating the system. (Kimura 2012). As for
social and welfare reforms led by Public Health and Welfare Section (PH&W) of the
General Headquarters, Supreme Command Allied Powers during the occupation of
Japan, see Sugiyama 1995; Aldous and Suzuki 2011; Takemae 2002; Gleich-Anthony
2007.
3. The public health nurse stationing system started in 1942 in Japan, but reorganized under GHQ/SCAP in postwar period, maintained in a few prefectures including
occupied Okinawa and Kochi (Ōmine 2001; Kimura 2012).
Chapter Three
The Occupying Other
Third-Country Nationals
and the U.S. Bases in Okinawa
Johanna O. Zulueta
In any overseas base construction of the United States military, third-country
nationals (TCNs) make up a significant number of the labor force, as well as
employees who staff these military installations for purposes they purportedly
serve.1 In Okinawa, occupying a middle ground between the U.S. military
and the locals, these TCNs may be regarded as “passive occupiers”—albeit
taking on these jobs mainly for economic and financial reasons—who played
significant, but very much overlooked roles during the American occupation
from 1945 to 1972.
While Filipinos made up a large number of these TCNs during the occupation (Yu-Jose 2002, 110), people from other countries also formed part of this
group. This paper focuses on the largest number of TCNs—Filipino nationals—hired as both professional and semi-skilled workers to work on U.S.
military installations on Okinawa’s main island. Recruited mainly because
of their English aptitude and familiarity with American culture—the Philippines being an erstwhile American colony (1898–1945)—it can be argued
that these workers played an important role in furthering the objectives of the
occupation then and now.
This study provides a view of postwar migrations between Okinawa and
the Philippines during the immediate years after the Second World War. I
point out that postcolonial relationships as well as other structural factors are
significant in looking at this particular migration project. In this paper, I also
explore the social constructions of race and the process of racialization during this period, by focusing on these TCNs and their positionality within the
base labor structure which placed the Americans on top and the Okinawans
at the bottom, thus indicating the underlying stratification and racisms that
were present between and among the U.S. military, the TCNs, and the locals.
Race is a social construct; and I use race in this study to indicate a group
39
40
Chapter Three
“socially defined on the basis of physical appearance” (Cornell and Hartmann
1998, 24). The concept of race also reflects power relations and such issues
will be touched on in the following pages. The process of racialization also
tends to create categories that, while premised on physical differences, are
also intertwined with other factors such as gender, class, and nationality.
Moreover, as migrants are in themselves active agents in the whole migratory process/es, this research will also utilize and analyze data culled from
life histories of some of these surviving “veterans” who continue to live their
lives in Okinawa.
For this study, I include in the category of TCNs those non-U.S. citizens
who were employed as workforce for the construction, maintenance, and
operation of U.S. military installations in Okinawa. Here, I include both bluecollar and white-collar workers as well as professionals (e.g. lawyers, medical doctors, etc.) who were of service to the U.S. occupation forces. I also
include in this category supplementary military forces, such as the Philippine
Scouts that served as an auxiliary unit of the United States army, as well as
“non-traditional” workers such as musicians who were employed mainly for
“entertainment” purposes and for boosting the morale of troops. To illustrate
the base labor structure at that time, I utilize two life stories of TCNs who
decided to settle in Okinawa. I chose to focus on two of these TCNs as they
give us an idea about the occupations of these Filipinos (as Philippine Scouts/
soldiers, civilian base employees, and musicians) upon moving to Okinawa
during the occupation period. It should be noted that many of these TCNs
living in Okinawa are already at an advanced age and many of them have
already passed away. I also refer to interviews and conversations I had with
some of these TCNs’ children, majority of whom currently work (many of
them have retired as of writing) on base as USFJ (United States Forces in
Japan) employees hired by the Japanese government (though the Ministry of
Defense), when they talked about their fathers.
First, I will interrogate the concepts of race and racialization and discuss
how these can give us an understanding of the base labor structure during the
occupation period in Okinawa. Next, I will look into the rationale for employing TCNs to assist in the construction and staffing of these military bases in
Okinawa during the immediate postwar years. I will then examine the recruitment process of these TCNs and their subsequent move to Okinawa as temporary (migrant) workers. With this, the study will also take into consideration
the role of the sending states in the hiring of these TCNs. More importantly,
as these TCNs were also active agents in this whole migration project, this
study will also attempt to describe lives of these workers in Okinawa during
this period through interview data of two of these “veterans” who remained
in Okinawa. The interviews were conducted in December 2012 with a follow-
The Occupying Other
41
up in March 2013. This study is significant as it situates the place of postwar
Okinawa within the whole U.S.-Japan relations, taking into consideration minor players such as migrants and migrant workers, as well as other peripheral
nation-states (i.e. the Philippines) in this whole scheme.
RACE AND RACIALIZATION IN OCCUPIED OKINAWA
Race is a much contested term in the social sciences. While popular meanings
of race as physical phenotypes on the basis of skin color very much exist to
this day, racial categories throughout history have always been tied to power
relations and ethnic minority formation (e.g. early Irish settlers in the United
States, the Chinese in South Africa). It should also be noted here that race
as a category is not fixed and that processes of racialization are time-space
contingent (e.g. such as the reclassification of the Chinese as “blacks” in
South Africa after the apartheid). As mentioned earlier, for this paper, I use
race to indicate a person or group of persons “socially defined on the basis
of physical appearance.” By physical appearance here, it is implied that skin
color and other distinct physical features become criteria for categorization,
hence “racialization.”
Racialization refers to a process whereby “racial meaning is attributed
to groups or social practices as a result of which racial hierarchies are constructed, maintained or challenged” (Ansell 2013, 127). From a constructivist perspective on race, racialization is a process of ascribing biological
characteristics to define an Other. For Robert Miles, race is “fundamentally
ideological” and that racialization is the process where our ideas of race are
made. Moreover, it is due to social structure and relations of domination
and subordination that some differences (mostly physical) are coded as race
(Murji and Solomos 2015, 265) ). Miles, in his book, Racism (1989), explicitly uses the concept of racialization:
. . . to refer to those instances where social relations between people have been
structured by the signification of human biological characteristics in such a way
as to define and construct differentiated social collectivities. The concept therefore refers to a process of categorisation, a representational process of defining
an Other (usually, but not exclusively) somatically. (Miles 1989, 75)
An agent of racialization is the state, which has racialized various groups
through projects such as colonialism and bureaucratic procedures such as the
use of the census (Ansell 2013, 127). The concept of racialization is useful in
understanding the place of Okinawa in Japanese history as well as its relationship with mainland Japan which has always been ambiguous. However, one
42
Chapter Three
cannot deny the fact that it always occupied a peripheral one. Once known as
the Kingdom of the Ryukyus, it was a group of islands that had its own distinct traditions, cultures, and languages. It enjoyed flourishing trade relations
with its neighbors from China to Southeast Asia in its heyday. In 1609 however, the kingdom was subjugated by the Shimazu clan of the Satsuma fief
and in 1879, the Meiji government officially made the Ryukyu Kingdom into
a prefecture, now known as Okinawa. While at first the government sought to
preserve Okinawan customs, policies of “forced” cultural assimilation were
eventually put in place to make the Okinawans become “Japanese” (Nihonjin
ni naru) (Tomiyama 1990). Tomiyama argues that being “Okinawan” and being “Japanese” was not in any way related to belonging to either an Okinawan
or a Japanese (i.e. mainland Japanese) culture. Rather, “Okinawan” can be
said to be a category bestowed upon by modern Japanese society. Hence, to
become “Japanese” entailed a process of modernization that called for the
eradication (fusshoku) of qualities deemed as primitive, and thus changed
into those seen as “modern,” such as being hygienic from non-hygenic (eisei
/fueisei), rational from insane (risei/kyōki), diligent from lazy (kinben/taida),
and modern from primitive (kindai/mikai) (Tomiyama 1990, 3–5).
This process of “Japanization” of the Okinawans did not erase the fact that
they were once (and still) considered to be of an inferior status than that of the
mainland Japanese. This “project” of turning the Okinawans into “Japanese”
reflects the various civilizing projects that occurred through conquest and colonization, where the “Other”—the “primitive,” those who “look” different,
etc.—has been racialized and had to undergo a process of “modernization”
and enlightenment. With this, the Okinawans were the racialized “Other.”
The issue of racialization in Okinawa took on a more complex form with
the American occupation of Okinawa. The United States forces, upon Japan’s defeat, turned Okinawa into a virtual U.S. military colony under direct
military administration, by virtue of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951
(McCormack 2007, 156). It was a known fact that the main reason for the
occupation was Okinawa’s strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region, what
with the burgeoning communist threat in the region at that time. It should also
be noted that during this time, Okinawa was not considered part of Japan; in
fact, Okinawans were “stateless” (Johnson 1997)—they were neither part of
Japan nor the United States. General Douglas MacArthur was said to have
stated that “Okinawans are not Japanese” (Tomiyama 1990, 1; Nomura 2005,
28), and this insistence of the U.S. on a separate Ryukyuan identity (Okinawans were referred to as Ryukyuans, and Okinawa as the Ryukyus, during
the occupation), can be seen as a tactic to separate Okinawa and reinforce
Okinawan identity as non-Japanese.
The Occupying Other
43
The occupation of Okinawa necessitated the construction of military bases
on the island as well as the labor to construct and staff these bases. With the
influx of groups other than the Americans for this purpose, processes of racialization took on a more complicated turn, with the Okinawans occupying
the lowest place in the racial hierarchy. This will be explored in the following
sections.
UNITED STATES MILITARY BASES AND THE “OTHER”
Military bases are installations used by the military, which “represent a
confluence of labor (soldiers, paramilitary workers, and civilians), land, and
capital in the form of static facilities, supplies, and equipment” (Lutz 2009b,
4). These bases have existed and continue to exist to provide military protection to host countries and regions against threats of war and military aggression—from the Cold War years to the fight against Islamic fundamentalism
and terrorism, notwithstanding the threat the Asia-Pacific region feels from
the hermit state of North Korea and the rise of its neighbor, China. Critics of
the U.S. bases and military presence throughout the world attribute the presence of these bases to the creation of an “empire,” where a country exerts its
political dominance on a region. Lutz adds that bases have been used to control the political and economic life of the host country, especially with regards
to foreign policy (Lutz 2009b, 8). It is not only the U.S. government, but also
the military, and various corporations (especially construction companies)
that benefit from the bases’ continued existence.
In any base construction, there is always a demand for contractors and labor power; and in the case of American military base constructions, it is usually former colonials, such as Filipinos, who take on the bulk of these jobs.
This is true when bases were built in the Asia-Pacific, where Filipinos (along
with other nationalities) were hired to assist in the building of these military
installations in Okinawa, as well as in Vietnam and Thailand, where Filipino
(and Korean) labor was brought in for this purpose (not to mention the presence of labor from the host country itself, known as “local nationals” or LNs).
At present, TCNs are also employed in bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where
nationals of the Global South (i.e. South and Southeast Asia) work alongside
LNs (Eichler 2014, 601). At the outset, base construction is a boon to nationals of much less economically developed countries as it translates into work
for these people. While the economic gains that have been made accessible
to these TCNs cannot be discounted, these military bases are testament to the
ongoing and growing (economic) gap between the U.S. and the countries in
44
Chapter Three
the periphery, as well as an undeniable “sense of racial, cultural, or social
superiority” (Lutz 2009b, 7) emanating from the imperial center.
TCNs are defined as persons who meet the following criteria (as stated
in the U.S. Department of State Unclassified Document on TCNs, page 1).
However, permanent legal resident aliens of the United States are not considered TCNs (USAID Foreign Service National Personnel Administration,
ADS Chapter 495, page 13).
1. If employed, is eligible for return travel to the TCN’s home country or
country from which recruited at U.S. Government expense.
2. Is on a limited appointment for a specific period of time.
3. Encumbers a direct-hire, personal service agreement (PSA) or personal
service contract (PSC) FSN position covered under the local compensation plan. Such an employee normally is recruited from outside the host
country and relocated from the point of recruitment to the host country.
The return travel obligation assumed by the U.S. Government may have
been the obligation of another employer in the area of assignment if
the employee has been in substantially continuous employment which
provided for the TCN’s return to home country or country from which
recruited.
4. For USAID, TCNs employed under a PSC are subject to provisions of
AID HB 14 (AIDAR).
The USAID document also states that TCNs are required to go home to their
country of recruitment within 30 days “after the termination or completion
of the contract or forfeit all rights to the repatriation” (USAID, ADS Chapter
495, page 13).
The hiring of TCNs become necessary when there are no qualified persons
in the host country to take on some specific jobs. TCNs are also hired when
the training of persons in the host country (i.e. local nationals or LNs) is
difficult due to time and other constraints. In the U.S. Department of State
Unclassified Document on TCNs, it is also stated that the hiring of TCNs will
be effected if “program efficiency and policy objectives can be achieved only
by using TCNs as a temporary substitute for available, eligible and qualified
U.S. citizens and persons from the host country” (U.S. Department of State
Unclassified Document on TCNs, page 2). This calls to mind the immediate
postwar conditions in Okinawa that necessitated the hiring of TCNs amid the
available human resources in the host society. Several can be mentioned here:
1) the lack of able-bodied personnel to help in base construction as well as
staffing of these military installations; 2) a language barrier between the occupying forces and the locals; and 3) the “former enemy” status of Japanese
The Occupying Other
45
(and Okinawans) that can be seen to be related to issues of “trust.” I explore
this further in the following sections.
MILITARY BASE CONSTRUCTION IN POSTWAR OKINAWA
The construction of U.S. military bases in Okinawa coincided with the American occupation (1945–1972) of the prefecture upon Japan’s defeat. Dubbed
the “keystone of the Pacific” (Inoue 2007, 41; Yoshida 2001, 61), Okinawa’s
position in the Pacific was regarded as geopolitically important—the islands
being strategically located “midway between Tokyo and Manila,” with all
the major cities in Asia “within a concentric circle of 2,000 kilometers”
(Akibayashi and Takazato 2009, 244). Thus, the argument for the existence
of a concentration of U.S. military bases in the main island of this small archipelago that only occupies 0.6 percent of the land area of the whole country of
Japan. It was said that after World War II, the Axis powers—which includes
Japan—hosted and continued to host the most number of bases, with Japan
alone hosting 3,800 military installations (Lutz 2009a).
The creation of military bases in Okinawa led to a “construction boom”
(Sellek 2003, 82) that saw the need for workers, not only during the construction phase, but also as employees of these military installations. Hence, aside
from Americans, TCNs were also hired to work on these bases. Majority of
the TCNs were Filipinos2 who occupied mostly white-collar positions with
some even serving in the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyus
or USCAR (Tobaru 1998, 31). Many of these Filipinos landed in contractual
jobs as laborers, cooks, and clerks, as well as in white-collar occupations as
engineers, medical doctors, musicians, among others (Yu-Jose 2002, 117). It
was said that Japanese were also hired and worked as TCNs3 (Yu-Jose 2002,
110). While majority of the Filipino TCNs were male, Filipino women also
worked in Okinawa mostly as domestic helpers and laundrywomen (Ohno
1991, 243; Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 70).4
Hiring foreign workers is usually done to address the imbalance in the supply of and demand for labor, especially when there is a surplus of jobs available. It is also a well-known fact that hiring workers to do menial work or
less-skilled labor attracts people who are willing to work on lower wages, and
these people usually come from lower-income countries or those countries
located in the periphery of the current world system. This is also the case with
regards to TCNs recruited to work in base construction and in service sectors
on base. TCNs are (and were) hired as a cheap labor force that were willing
to work on lower wages (Barker 2009, 232). They also work alongside local
nationals or LNs, who themselves are paid lower wages, and in the case of
46
Chapter Three
Okinawa during the occupation were even paid at much lower levels. Eichler
(2014), in her work on citizenship and the recruitment of third-country nationals to work on U.S. military installations, said that hiring workers outside
the U.S. citizenry, as well as the reliance on the “global inequalities of citizenship,” “simultaneously intersect” with gendered, racialized, and classed
inequalities (2014, 600). This reflects the case in the immediate postwar
years in Okinawa, where a pay-scale hierarchy putting U.S. citizens on top
and Okinawans at the bottom speaks of various inequalities that are present
within and among peoples in this particular space of the U.S. military base.
In the succeeding sections, however, I would also like to point out that
while most TCNs during this time were semi-skilled workers, there were also
those who worked as skilled and highly skilled workers and professionals, as
I earlier mentioned. In this case, while they may be regarded as professionals
and more skilled than their compatriots, they still occupy a much lower position than their counterparts who hold U.S. citizenship. Thus, it can be argued
that there is stratification within the category of TCNs as it is among the U.S.
military, other U.S. citizens who work on base, and local nationals or LNs.
RECRUITMENT AND THE
ENTRY OF FILIPINO TCNS TO OKINAWA
Recruitment, employment, and the move to Okinawa of the Filipino TCNs
occurred in the early years of the occupation. The period between 1945–
1960—the first 15 years of the occupation of Okinawa—is, in particular,
significant as it was also during this period (particularly in the late 1950s) that
the number of TCNs was significantly reduced, and in 1958, their numbers
decreased to only 4.2 percent of the total civilian labor force (which excludes
American nationals) (Yu-Jose 2002, 112). Thus, it can be surmised that this
15-year period spans the start of the TCNs’ work in Okinawa up until the
termination of their contracts.
Recruitment for labor was carried out in Manila, which saw numerous
Filipinos (mostly men) applying for these jobs, some even coming from provinces not exactly in close proximity to the Philippine capital. These jobs range
from the semi-skilled to professional white-collar occupations, such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Ohno mentioned that the Americans preferred
people who could speak English, and Filipinos who were educated in an
American system of education were naturally favored (Ohno 1991, 242), not
to mention, the Philippines’ status as an erstwhile American colony. Recruitment also entailed exams.5 However, according to hearsay among the elderly
(in Okinawa), since Americans were looking for Filipinos to work on base in
The Occupying Other
47
Okinawa during that time, they would call out to people on the streets of Manila and whoever was interested and fit for the job was hired. In other words,
it seems that at the outset there was no formal recruitment policy for Filipino
labor on base.6 However, the recruitment and outsourcing of labor from other
countries is a complex web that entails various actors and processes; and in
this case, state-level relations (i.e. between the U.S. and the Philippines, with
the participation of the Japanese government) definitely come into play.
Filipinos made up a big percentage of TCNs hired by the United States
Civil Administration of the Ryukyus or USCAR (Tobaru 1998, 31). There
are four categories of base workers (Nagumo 1996, 33):
1. Workers who receive their salaries from the U.S. defense budget
2. Workers who receive their salaries from U.S. government agencies’ disbursements based on an independent profit system
3. House maids
4. Workers of agencies or companies carrying out their business inside the
bases, such as construction companies
Meanwhile, in an interview with a former Filipino base worker, Ohno states
that there are three types of Filipino workers who went to Okinawa: 1) those
who went as soldiers (i.e. Philippine Scouts); 2) those who worked as employees for the military and the American government in Okinawa; and 3)
those who were contracted to work in construction-related jobs, as drivers,
engineers, etc. (Ohno 1991, 243). The first group of Filipinos were soldiers,
known as the Philippine Scouts, which formed part of the American forces
stationed at Okinawa (Yu-Jose 2002, 117). They replaced the First Amphibious Truck Company, composed of African-Americans, who were redeployed
to Osaka due to complaints against them (Yu-Jose 2002, 117). The complaints included misbehavior, trespassing into civilian areas, rape, and other
crimes. The Philippine Scouts, however, were not better than the Americans
they replaced. Due to reported abuses that these soldiers committed, they
were made to return to the Philippines (Tobaru 1998, 31). The Philippine
Scouts only stayed for around two years and four months (Tobaru 1998, 31;
Yu-Jose 2002, 110).
Thousands of Filipino workers were also hired to work in Okinawa during
this time. They were the second and third types of workers, as mentioned
above. It was in the latter years of the 1940s to the early 1950s that large
numbers of Filipinos went to Okinawa to work on base. Meanwhile, the Okinawans had to content themselves with manual labor (nikutai rōdō) (Ohno
1991, 233–243). The Filipinos were paid in dollars in accordance with the
1947 Agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines (Treaties and Other
Chapter Three
48
Table 3.1. Base Workers’ Wages (in U.S. Dollars)
Nationality
Lowest Wage Paid per Hour
Highest Wage Paid per Hour
American
Filipino
Japanese
Okinawan
$1.20
52 cents
83 cents
10 cents
6.52
3.77
1.03
36 cents
Source: Nagumo (1996, 39).
International Act Series 3646), which states that “Filipino workers on Okinawa will receive wages based on the dollar cost rates being paid for similar
work in the Philippines, plus a 25% overseas differential.”7 The Filipinos
occupied a high position in the pay scale, next only to Americans, with the
mainland Japanese ranking third, and the Okinawans fourth and at the bottom
of the pay scale (Amemiya 1996; Yoshida 2001, 30; Sellek 2003, 82; Yoshida
2007, 82). Table 3.1 above illustrates the lowest and the highest hourly wages
in U.S. dollars received by these four groups.
According to Yoshida, the workers (gunsaku rōdōsha or military operations workers) were paid in B-yen currency with Okinawans receiving the
lowest hourly wage (Yoshida 2007, 82). He enumerated the hourly wages of
the workers in B-yen, which I arranged into a table (Table 3.2) below.
Looking at Table 3.1 above, the gaps in the wage levels of these four
groups are startlingly apparent with American workers being paid almost 1.8
times more than Filipinos (an almost 42 percent gap between Filipino workers who received the highest wage at 3.77 U.S. dollars per hour, to those of
U.S. citizens who received 6.52 dollars per hour). Comparing the Americans’
pay to the Japanese, it can be seen that the former are paid around 6.33 times
more than the latter (an increase to around 84 percent wage gap between
U.S. citizens and Japanese), and American workers receive a wage of 18.1
times more than the local Okinawans (a gap of around 94 percent between
Americans and Okinawans). Filipinos, despite occupying a high position in
the pay scale hierarchy, were said to be paid “local wage rates” even during
Table 3.2. Base Workers’ Wages (in B-yen)
Nationality
Lowest Wage Paid per Hour
Highest Wage Paid per Hour
American
Filipino
Japanese
Okinawan
125.20
48
25
9.50
751.20
196.80
45
25
Source: Yoshida (2007, 82).
The Occupying Other
49
the early years of the occupation, as per a document from the PHILRYCOM
(Philippines-Ryukyus Command) to the General Headquarters of the Far East
Command on 8 January 1947:
Policy of this command has been to employ Filipino Nationals under local wage
rates. Only US continental citizens are employed at US rates of pay. Those US
citizens of Filipino extraction who were born in US (sic), and any Filipinos who
were US Civil Service employees within continental US prior to being assigned
this command are only Filipinos receiving US rates of pay. This Hq (sic) does
not concur in employment of Filipinos at US rates unless they meet requirements indicated above.8
As gleaned from the above document, only Filipinos who have acquired U.S.
citizenship or were U.S.-born and those who were employed in the U.S. civil
service were eligible to be paid at U.S. rates. In short, only those who have
U.S. citizenship are able to access U.S. wage rates and those who are not citizens are excluded from this, despite working for the U.S. occupation forces
and being under U.S. jurisdiction during this period. This case illustrates a
“global inequality of citizenship” (Eichler 2014) that has been present even
during the time when the U.S. was just starting to establish its military might
in the Asia-Pacific region through the military bases it began constructing
with contracted labor from outside of its citizenry, mostly by former colonials (i.e. Filipinos) and the locals hosting these military installations (i.e.
Okinawans). Needless to say, the defeated enemy—the Japanese—were also
hired as TCNs albeit receiving much lower pay than the Filipinos.
Meanwhile, by the late 1940s to the early 1950s, there were an estimated
6,000 Filipinos in Okinawa, 90 percent of which were male, with around half
of them single (Ohno 1991, 243; Tobaru 1998, 31). Many Filipinos cohabited
or married Okinawan women. It was due to their relatively higher salaries
among base workers that made them more attractive as marriage partners
(Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 88). When the work contracts of these Filipinos
expired, most of them went back to the Philippines, bringing their wives and
children with them.
There were cases wherein only the Filipino husband went back to his country, leaving his Okinawan wife and child (or children) behind (Ohno 1991,
243). Meanwhile, cases wherein the Filipino husband never returned to the
Philippines are many. Some of them still work on base (despite their advanced
age) and not a few of them have had their nationalities changed from Philippine to American (Suzuki and Tamaki 1996, 70–71). Several of them have
decided to be naturalized as Japanese when they decided to make Okinawa
their “home.” In the following section, I present two cases of these former
TCNs and narrations of their lives in Okinawa under American occupation.
50
Chapter Three
BEING THE “OTHER”
OCCUPIER: TWO CASE STUDIES OF TCNS
While it cannot be denied that the motivating factor for third country nationals to work on base is largely economic, and that for many of them, working
on U.S. military installations will give them more financial stability than
remaining in their home countries, macro-level factors such as global economic inequities during this time should also be taken into consideration.
Moreover, as I mentioned earlier, TCNs are only recruited if there is a need
for a temporary substitute for available and qualified persons, who are either
U.S. citizens or those from the host country.
In the case of Okinawa, the language barrier as well as the lack of qualified people could have been impediments in hiring LNs, thus the need to take
in TCNs from countries such as the Philippines. This becomes a significant
aspect from the perspective of U.S.-Japan relations as well as in problematizing the occupation of Okinawa, because of the presence of other actors (i.e.
TCNs) in the whole scheme of things.
Carlos Amoranto: From the Barracks to the Base
Carlos Amoranto9 came to Okinawa in 1947. Born on 7 January 1924 in Los
Baños, Laguna, a province located two hours south of Manila, Carlos grew
up experiencing poverty in his childhood. He is the third of four children (but
the second child died in infancy). Talking to me primarily in English, he told
me about growing up poor, but trying his best to attend school even if it meant
“stealing” paper and pencils just so he could attend classes. He was only able
to attend elementary school and when he was 17, he was able to find a job
with the U.S. Army engineering corps based in the Philippines. He was told
that the corps needed help in the kitchen and he was hired for the job. He told
me that there were two other Filipino men that he was tasked to supervise in
the kitchen. Carlos’s case, as well as the other two Filipinos’, illustrates how
LNs and TCNs then and now are being hired to work on jobs that the U.S.
military and other U.S. citizens working on base would not take on. This is
also due to the fact that TCNs—mostly coming from lower-income countries—are willing to take on these kinds of jobs for less pay, thus reinforcing
the income hierarchy that exists. While income levels vary across skills, it
cannot be denied that the stratification according to skill levels also suggests
inequalities not only among nationalities, but also along racial lines. It should
be noted that Carlos also lacked certain skills and cultural capital needed to
qualify him for a better position.
Carlos also talked about being drafted into the Philippine army and his experience in the Death March in Bataan during the Second World War, where
The Occupying Other
51
thousands of soldiers died. He was encouraged to seek a better future abroad
and was told of jobs available in Guam and Okinawa, and he chose to go to
the latter. Philippine nationals, who at that time were also recovering from the
throes of war, saw work abroad as a panacea to the economic and financial
difficulties experienced back home. In addition, they were favored to work as
TCNs in Guam and Okinawa (as well as in other countries were bases were
constructed) due to their familiarity with American culture and their ability
to communicate in English.
Carlos arrived in Okinawa on 21 September 1947. He was recruited by the
U.S. Army to work at a laundry (Choirmaster Laundry) as a clerk typist. He
once told the recruiters: “you are sending me to Okinawa as a clerk typist and
I don’t [even] know what a typewriter is.” He, however, took on the job, as
he was told to learn whatever skills he can learn while he is with the army.
He, along with other Filipino workers, were on a big ship to Okinawa and
he said that he did not notice their arrival in Okinawa as they were playing
mahjong. However, when he arrived in Okinawa, he was rather assigned to be
time keeper at the laundry. He stayed for five years in the laundry working as
a time keeper. While working as a time keeper, Carlos told me how he would
encounter Okinawan workers—originally farmers—who were using someone
else’s name in order to earn a living. As earlier mentioned, Okinawans—local
nationals or LNs—were positioned at the bottom of the pay scale hierarchy.
With the severe social and economic conditions the Okinawans experienced
during the war’s aftermath, it is no surprise that the locals would go as far as
to use someone else’s name in order to be able to find a means of livelihood.
It was also during this time when Carlos was working on base that he met his
future wife, whom he married in 1952.
After being discharged from the laundry, Carlos also worked with the
District Engineer’s Office as an inspector and had worked there for about
10 years, the longest he worked in when he was working as a TCN. He also
mentioned that with the entry of SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), “all
Filipinos (and foreign nationals) will be terminated.” This is in reference to
the time after the reversion of Okinawa, where U.S. forces started operating
under the terms of the U.S.-Japan SOFA, which according to a document of
the U.S. Department of the State, makes no provisions for employment of
TCNs.10 The document also states that before the reversion, TCN residence
and employment in Okinawa was “completely” under U.S. jurisdiction. Carlos said that he was told by the military, “you have to go, even though we
need you.” He was then “stranded” (i.e. unemployed) for a year. Being a Filipino national during this time, Carlos said that he was faced with a problem
as he did not want to go back to the Philippines and leave his wife and two
children in Okinawa. He thus looked for work and was fortunate to land a job
working for Barclay, an American company.
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A naturalized Japanese, Carlos, 88 years old at the time of the interview,
told me that he enjoys staying in Okinawa, where he has two grandchildren
from his daughter. While he still desires to go home to his birthplace, he said
that he could not since he has been away for a long time, but nevertheless he
still talks with his sister (in the Philippines) on the phone.
Enrico Jamora: Continuing the Music He Plays
Enrico Jamora11 was a working student in the Philippines studying electrical
engineering, but in 1955, the U.S. Army Special Services contracted him to
play in Japan as a member of a jazz band. A native of Manila, Enrico was
born on 19 December 1925, the eldest of nine children. He claims to be born
a musician, considering his special skills in music. He started his music career
in the Philippines as a staff musician in a local TV program, CBN Canteen.
Determined to finish his university education, he spent his days working for
CBN Canteen while studying electrical engineering in the evenings. Aged 87
(at the time of the interview), he continues to work at a music school in Camp
Foster in Chatan Town as a music teacher, teaching music and the guitar to
children of U.S. military personnel as well as other interested individuals. He
started teaching in 2004.
When he was in the Japanese mainland playing with a band, he spoke of
how most of the members were Filipinos and that a suggestion to include
local nationals (LNs) to the band came up. During this time, the music industry on base was mostly composed of Filipino nationals. Enrico added that
Americans were not part of the playing bands since they would have to be
paid higher rates, which most clubs would not be able afford. This would
indicate that a reason why Filipinos dominated the music scene at that time
was because they were willing to take on the work regardless of the rates of
pay. Enrico, who started as a jazz musician before moving on to play in an
orchestra, also experienced touring several U.S. bases in the region, such as
those in Korea. He arrived at Okinawa’s Kadena Airbase in 1958 as a recruit
by the Air Force and has remained in the prefecture ever since. During this
time, he was part of the Latin Quarter Review—an orchestra that performed
exclusively for the U.S. military on U.S. bases. He told me that the name of
the orchestra was decided on by the promoter who was also working with
the military. He added that musicians were considered as officers at that
time, since they are highly regarded. Musical skills can be translated into
cultural capital in this regard, and playing music is not necessarily the same
as working in the mess hall, kitchen, or in construction, and other such jobs
that require manual labor. Enrico originally thought of staying only for two
years in Okinawa and go back to Manila to finish his studies, but realized that
The Occupying Other
53
what he would earn after graduating from university was not comparable to
what he was earning in Okinawa as a musician. This apparently is caused by
inequalities in the world system, then and now, wherein the pursuit of economic mobility and (economic) capital accumulation becomes more feasible
(in a short amount of time) through migration. He then told me that he never
regretted his decision.
Enrico said that presently, only four of the original musicians who went to
Okinawa during the American occupation remain in the prefecture. While he
decided to become a naturalized Japanese as he planned on staying longer in
Okinawa, and that naturalization was a more practical option, the other three
remained Filipino nationals (but have permanent residency). Enrico’s decision to naturalize is premised on two reasons: 1) the acquisition of a legal
status to be able to stay in Okinawa and be granted more (legal) security, as
compared to holders of permanent residency visas; and 2) the assurance of
mobility in terms of crossing borders, as holders of a passport belonging to a
country in the Global North enjoy relative ease of movement than those of the
Global South. Of the other three “veteran musicians,” one has a Taiwanese
wife, another married an Okinawan, and the other is married to a Filipino.
Enrico has two grandsons by his son, who is an engineer. He is already welladjusted to life in Okinawa even if he does not consider himself fluent in the
Japanese language. He is also well-connected to his roots as he goes home
every year during school breaks in June and December.
SITUATING THE TCN
Based on the two case studies, it can be surmised that the issue of class also
plays a role in the recruitment and employment of TCNs for work on base.
Much like entering the military, working as a TCN was a way for these
people to augment their family’s income, and for some, a way to get out of
poverty. In Carlos’s case, he once worked as a soldier before deciding to
move to Okinawa to work on base, which was seen as more lucrative than
remaining in the Philippines. With only an elementary education, he had to be
relegated to lesser-skilled jobs, but he chose to see it as an opportunity also
to learn more skills. Enrico’s case illustrates those who occupy the lowermiddle class to middle class who were able to receive a college education
and the necessary cultural capital to be able to work in jobs that call for more
skills, such as that of a musician. As I earlier mentioned, for this paper, I also
include professional workers into the category of TCN, thus medical doctors,
lawyers, engineers, etc. who worked for the U.S. military during this time
are also categorized as TCNs. Hence, a hierarchy depending on the type of
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Chapter Three
work—whether the work requires more skills or not—the TCNs engaged in
also illustrates inequalities even among the TCNs.
These TCNs, positioned as an “Other” to the Americans, as well as an
“Other” to the local population, can also be considered as “occupiers” in
themselves—they were also allies of the Americans—albeit not being covered by SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) status, which also points to
less (job) security for the TCNs. Moreover, as the “Occupying Other,” these
Filipino TCNs may be considered to be a “site of American colonialism writ
small”12 and we should not forget the fact that they were also ranked and paid
higher wages than the Japanese and the Okinawans.
STRATIFICATION AND RACIALIZATION
OF BASE WORK IN OCCUPIED OKINAWA
In the 20 years that the U.S. occupied the prefecture, “Japan retained only
‘residual sovereignty’ over Okinawa while the U.S. military actually ran the
place” (Johnson 1997). During the war, Okinawans were left to think about
their place in Japanese society and whether they were really considered Japanese. I have previously mentioned that General MacArthur emphasized that
Okinawans were not Japanese and insisted on a separate Ryukyuan identity.
It was also argued that Okinawan identity as non-Japanese was reinforced as
a “rationale for transferring the stewardship of the former prefecture to the
United States” (Allen 2002, 7). This definitely was a racist ploy that labeled
Okinawans as the “Other”—and thus, inferior—to the erstwhile U.S. enemy,
the Japanese. The underlying racism during this period was also manifested
in base work, where Okinawans as LNs were situated on the lowest rank in
the hierarchy (below the Japanese) of not only wage levels, but type of work.
I also mentioned earlier that the number of TCNs was significantly reduced
in the late 1950s, with their numbers only amounting to 4.2 percent of the
total civilian labor force (Yu-Jose 2002, 112). The reduction did not sit well
with the Filipinos who decried the termination of their contracts as an issue of
“persecution and discrimination” (Letters to the Editor, Morning Star, 1957).
Among the several documents I gathered from the Okinawa Prefectural Archives, a six-page letter written by Filipino returnees to the Department of
Foreign Affairs in Manila in 1957 caught my attention. The letter was written
by two former TCNs who identified themselves as members of the “Filipino
Returnees from Okinawa Association.” In it they outlined nine individual
cases of discrimination and injustice toward Filipino TCNs despite “more
than ten long years of loyal and faithful service to the United States Armed
Forces in the Ryukyu Islands.”13 Most of the cases were about Filipino TCNs
The Occupying Other
55
being terminated from their jobs (even before the end of contract), “bumpedoff and separated from his job to accommodate an American civilian employee,” and “forcibly” deported and repatriated. The letter also added that
the “campaign of persecutions and discriminations is aimed only to (sic) the
Filipinos and does not affect other nationals such as the Americans, Japanese
or Chinese.”14 These cases undeniably illustrate underlying racisms within the
context of base work. Moreover, as majority of the workforce are men, this
ranking according to nationality—which in many cases is also racialized—
can also be considered to be related to inequalities within the male workforce,
thus also indicating that recruitment of base labor was (and continues to
be) highly gendered as it was racial, and that a “hierarchy of masculinities”
(Eichler 2014, 607) among the workers and the TCNs existed.
It should also be noted here that Okinawa’s relationship to the U.S. and
Japan has become “feminized,” where occupied Okinawa is seen to be
female (Molasky 1999), with the sexual violence and rape cases symbolic
of Okinawa’s victimhood to both the Japanese (for allowing almost 75
percent of the U.S. bases on Okinawan soil) and American hegemony (the
occupation and the presence military bases) to this day (Angst 2009, 142).
Likewise, Okinawans can also be seen as “feminized,” with most of them
relegated to low-skilled and unskilled work (i.e. skilled equals masculine,
unskilled equals feminine)
The roles played by the U.S. government and U.S. corporations in the
recruitment of TCNs to these military bases are largely overlooked as much
emphasis is given to people who are seen to migrate for greener pastures.
These individuals are seen as solely pursuing their own economic gains—
while this is most of the time true, the invisible hand of the United States and
its “aggressive” role played through “colonialism, imperialist wars and occupations, capital investment and material extraction in Third World countries
and through active recruitment of racialized and gendered immigrant labor”
(Espiritu 2008, 207) escapes attention.
CONCLUSION
Okinawa has been considered as a strategic site for the United States’ military
installations in the fight against communism during the Cold War years. Its
geographic location in the Asia-Pacific region is also seen as strategic in the
current order of things with the Chinese and North Korean threats looming in
the region. It will not be prophetic to say that the current U.S. military presence in Okinawa will likely continue and the recruitment of military personnel and TCNs is generally expected.
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Chapter Three
The presence of U.S. military bases is usually equated with the U.S.
military stationed in the host society, but not much attention is given to the
“Others” who work on these military installations. These TCNs are usually
recruited to address the needs of the U.S. military especially when the necessary skills and expertise are not readily available. It cannot be denied however
that many of these TCNs come from developing countries and see base work
as a means to alleviate their economic conditions. During the American occupation of Okinawa, majority of these TCNs were from the Philippines.
As a provider of labor and services to the U.S. military, it can be argued
that the TCNs are in a way “complicit” to the aims (and means) of the occupiers, thus becoming “occupiers” themselves. As foreign nationals hired
for base construction and eventual employment on base (both through semiskilled and professional work) to aid the U.S. postwar administration in Okinawa, these TCNs played a significant role in carrying out the goals of the
occupation government. As with most of the U.S. military installations in the
world at present, TCNs have become indispensable labor (albeit cheap) that
enabled basing in many territories, including present-day Okinawa. The part
played by the TCNs becomes significant in Okinawa’s history not only for
their role in the military bases, but also for the socio-cultural influence they
had on Okinawa, such as in transmitting U.S. culture that had an influence on
Okinawa’s postwar culture and society (i.e. jazz music, brought by Filipino
musicians such as Enrico whose case I mentioned in this paper).15 The occupation of Okinawa should not only be seen as a relationship between the
occupied (i.e. Japan/Okinawa) and occupier (i.e. the United States), as there
were also peripheral actors that played the role of the latter.
NOTES
1. Parts of this paper are based on the Ph.D. dissertation I submitted to Hitotsubashi University in March 2011. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented
at the Asian Studies Association Conference held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel
and Towers on March 26–29, 2015. All errors in the manuscript—both content and
otherwise—are my sole responsibility. I would like to acknowledge funding from
the Grants-in-Aid (KAKENHI) I received when I was a JSPS (Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science) Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011–2013.
2. Aside from Filipinos, TCNs from India also played a significant role during
this time.
3. It should be noted here that Okinawa was considered not part of the Japanese
mainland during the occupation period. It has since reverted to Japan in 1972.
4. I personally met a Filipino woman dentist who moved to Okinawa during the
occupation period with her Filipino husband who was also a dentist. She has since re-
The Occupying Other
57
sided in Okinawa and lives with her son and daughter-in-law. She still holds Filipino
nationality. (Conversation with Dr. Santos (pseudonym), Ginowan City, 9 December
2012).
5. Information from an interview with Sonny Uechi (pseudonym) on 15 March
2010 in Chatan Town. Sonny (during the time of interview) was working on base. His
father was once a TCN in Okinawa and his mother is Okinawan.
6. Information from an interview with Marco Yara (pseudonym) on 10 March
2010 in Naha. Marco (during the time of interview) was working on base. As with
Sonny, Marco’s father was once a TCN in Okinawa. His mother is also Okinawan.
7. Airgram from the U.S. Department of State to Manila, 27 February 1967.
8. General Headquarters, Far East Command, Adjutant General’s Office Radio
and Cable Center, Message from CG PHILRYCOM (Philippines-Ryukyus Command), 8 January 1947.
9. Pseudonym. Interviewed on 7 December 2012, informant’s home.
10. Telegram from U.S. Embassy Tokyo to U.S. Embassy Manila on the Filipino
Employees on Okinawa, June 1972.
11. Pseudonym. Interviewed on 21 March 2013, Camp Foster.
12. I thank my friend and colleague Ryan Indon for this comment.
13. Letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila, 22 July 1957, page 1.
Department of Foreign Affairs Records.
14. Ibid, page 2.
15. It has been said that the American occupation of Okinawa paved the way for
the development of jazz in the prefecture. Most of the foreign jazz musicians during
this period are Filipinos. See Sunamori (2000) and Roberson (2011) for more information on jazz music in postwar Okinawa.
Chapter Four
Reversion-Era Proposals for
Okinawan Regional Autonomy
Ryan Masaaki Yokota
On May 15, 1972, residents of Okinawa woke to a new day and found that
they were “Japanese” once again.1 For the twenty-seven years from the end
of World War II until the “reversion” of Okinawa to Japanese administrative
control, Okinawans had resided in an ambiguous colonial space, situated as
they were under U.S. military/administrative control and limited in their basic
human and civil rights. Yet despite the victory of the decades-long reversion
movement, many Okinawans also voiced consternation and even outright
anger at the terms of the agreement, with some arguing that the reversion
was nothing more than a new “annexation” of Okinawa (heigō) which had allowed for the continued stationing of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. As poet
and activist Takara Ben noted, the day of reversion was a day of heavy rains,
and “it was said that both the Okinawan people and the heavens were crying”
on that day (Takara 2005, 71). In denouncing the “disposition” (shobun) of
Okinawa at a prefectural residents’ rally not far from the Japanese government sponsored reversion commemoration ceremony, Takara and others
marched down Kokusai-dōri, choking back tears of both rage and regret. On
the sides of the main thoroughfare, all the signs and placards celebrating reversion were torn and broken into pieces (Takara 2005, 72). Indeed, for many
Okinawans, reversion represented a new betrayal of their postwar quest for
rights and freedom from military control.2
In order to understand how Okinawan intellectuals dealt with their resentment over reversion, this chapter focuses on an engagement with reversionera debates over local autonomy in Okinawa. In many respects, existing
studies of the reversion movement tend to focus on a top-down view of the
Okinawan reversion process as a fait accompli which was bound to occur
as the inexorable result of “ending the postwar period” of U.S.-Japan diplomatic relations, or as a bottom-up reversion movement that actualized a
59
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Chapter Four
homogenous desire on the part of local residents, and which was rapturously
celebrated without dissent upon completion. In contrast to these perspectives,
this study seeks to complicate the nature of the Okinawan reaction to reversion, to show that the critique of the Japanese state in regional autonomy debates, and the imagination of alternative arrangements of the center-periphery
relationship, occurred at the very moment in which the reversion process was
being realized, and included a number of lively intellectual debates. Within
this context, the underlying argument of this chapter is that while the postwar
movement for regional autonomy in Japan has generally been from greater
centralization to more local autonomy, in contrast, the situation for Okinawa
has largely moved in the opposite direction toward greater central control.
In focusing on the question of regional autonomy in Okinawa, this chapter
will not be focusing on movements for independence which sought to promote the development of an independent Okinawan nation-state. Nor will this
chapter focus on those activists and intellectuals such as the hanfukkiron-sha
(or proponents of opposition to reversion), who sought to contest reversion
by not only promoting a logic of opposition to the Japanese state, but also critiqued the very nature of the modern nation-state system itself.3 Instead, this
chapter is focused on the specific nature of those intellectuals and activists
which argued for Okinawan autonomy from within the logic of the Japanese
state itself, as a means of carving out a more limited sense of sovereignty and
rights.
In describing this process, this chapter will begin by briefly discussing
the development of local autonomy in postwar Japan, and detail Okinawa’s
position in the reversion process and the manner in which, in contrast with
growing mainland movements for decentralization, the reversion process
ultimately foreclosed alternative possibilities for local-state relationships
that could have afforded greater opportunities for Okinawan autonomy.
Within this context, initiatives for local autonomy were voiced by a number
of prominent Okinawan intellectuals and their supporters, and an analysis of
their proposals will take up the remainder of this chapter, highlighting their
critique of the reversion agreement, their positions related to Okinawa’s
historical particularity, and their push to address local sovereignty issues,
especially in terms of diplomacy and defense.
POSTWAR OCCUPATION AUTHORITIES
AND LOCAL AUTONOMY IN JAPAN
The development of postwar autonomy issues in Japan largely diverged from
the situation in Okinawa, during the twenty-seven years in which Okinawa
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
61
remained under U.S. rule. Beginning with the U.S. occupation in 1945,
American planners on the Japanese mainland had long sought to institute
measures to promote local autonomy at the prefectural, city, and village level,
as a means by which to break up the worst excesses of the Japanese wartime
state and to instill a sentiment of grassroots democracy. In attempting to accomplish this task, occupation planners had to overcome decades of historical development in which the very idea of local self-government had been
associated with control by the central government. The centralization of the
prewar Japanese state, with its appointed prefectural governors and placing
of staff of the Ministry of the Interior at local executive offices, was seen by
occupation authorities as part of the structural foundation that had limited the
growth of democratic sentiment (Horie 1996, 49). Though there were some
wartime initiatives to spur local autonomy in the guise of local town-block associations and other forms of neighborhood groups, much of this growth was
geared toward the sublimation of dissent and the enforcement of community
compliance with wartime goals of military recruitment and taxation (Horie
1996, 55). Local autonomy was not predicated on allowing for democratic
growth, but in forging localities into the national war effort, and thus served
as a tool or even a smokescreen for central authoritarian control.
Seeking to break these precedents, authorities of the Supreme Commander
of the Allied Powers General Headquarters (SCAP GHQ) were quick to
initiate a number of reforms at the onset of the occupation period. Chief
among them included measures such as the abolition of the Ministry of the
Interior, initiating the direct election of prefectural governors starting from
1946, promoting direct democracy through referendum and recall options,
and promoting other proposals for local autonomy at the prefectural level.
Though occupation authorities sought to advance local autonomy as a stated
goal of the occupation, in truth, strong central control over prefectural affairs
persisted, especially as seen through the continuance of delegated functions
from the central government (kikan inin jimu) which made up “more than
50% of the operations of the prefecture” (Hoshino 1996, 360), with some
academics arguing that this rate may reach as high as “70 to 80 percent of
metropolitan and prefectural districts’ daily work” (Yoshida 1990, 132). Additionally, central control over finances continued to limit local autonomy,
buttressing criticisms of the “30-percent local autonomy principle in Japan,”
which argues that of the total budgetary needs for any locality, that only 30
per cent is raised by the localities themselves, while the rest of their budget
is received in the form of designated transfers from the central government
(Aldrich 1999, 63). These two aspects, consisting of delegated functions and
a lack of local fiscal autonomy, combined with other norms of administration
such as the siting of central government officials in localities either through
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transfers (katsuai), or through the taking of jobs in localities by central
government officials post-retirement (amakudari), all serve to illustrate the
continuing power and influence of central authorities in the postwar period.
Despite these continuing structural limitations, GHQ policies made a
significant impact in concretizing legal protections and rights of autonomy.
Foremost among these were the inclusion of provisions in Chapter 8 of the
1947 Japanese Constitution which deal with local self-government. Even
further, the SCAP administration implemented the Local Autonomy Law
(Chihō-jichi-hō) in the same year as the passage of the constitution, which
meant that a range of articles, including measures allowing for the dissolution of assemblies (article 76), dismissal of assembly members (article 80)
and chief executives (article 81), initiatives to enact, amend, or abolish local
ordinances (article 74) and to inspect local administrations (article 75), were
now passed into law (Takao 1998, 963). These measures were all designed
to increase citizen voice and democratic processes at the lower levels, and to
give popular voices the legal framework in which to keep politicians and the
political system accountable to the electorate.
LEFTIST REACTIONS TO THE HIGH GROWTH
PERIOD AND THE PUSH FOR LOCAL AUTONOMY
In the postwar period, the 1950s marked a time of re-entrenchment by
Japanese industries as they slowly emerged from the wreckage of postwar
devastation. The outbreak of the Korean War in the early 1950s sparked a
procurement boom instigated by U.S. wartime needs that quickly spurred
Japanese growth. Heading into the high growth period of the 1960s, not only
did Japan experience massive acceleration of the national economy, but the
changes of the time period started to become more evident, in terms of the
further movement of people from rural areas to the cities, declines in the primary industries of agriculture, forestry, and fishery, and an increased need for
urban planning (Muto 1996, 69). The growth of heavy industry, particularly
in the chemical industry, spurred citizen concerns about quality of life and the
impacts of pollution and other externalities on the environment and the public (the outrage over mercury poisoning at Minamata being the most evident
example) (Hoshino 1996, 362). Anti-war sentiments also motivated local citizen groups to arise and confront the limitations of the center.4 Though 1955
marked the onset of the 1955-system (gojūgonen taisei) and decades long
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) dominance at the national level, localities remained the arena of greatest impact for local progressives, who began to win
electoral victories and establish bases of political power that countered LDP
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
63
hegemony. These progressive local governments (kakushin-jichitai) grew in
influence and “their leaders (governors or mayors) were from the nationallevel opposition party and committed to the opposition party’s policy of
promoting regulations concerning pollution, environmental protection, and
antiwar” positions (Muto 1996, 69).
The Nixon oil shock in 1971, combined with the change to a floating exchange rate system in 1973, also dramatically impacted the political situation
in shifting national economic policy toward a less centrally directed model,
where “the center of the industrial structure rapidly shifted from capitalintensive basic industries to resource conservation and the high value-added
processing industry” (Hoshino 1996, 366). These industries, known as “footloose industries” due to their relative freedom to situate factories far from
metropolitan areas, were increasingly dispersed throughout the country and
drew attention to the economic and structural needs of far-distant localities.
Additionally, an aging population and declining rural countryside increasingly drew attention to the growth needs of the welfare state, with concerns
over health care, public housing, unemployment, and nursery schools, among
a range of other issues necessitating greater involvement from localities to fill
in for inadequacies in national policy. All of these aspects helped to inform
the idea that this time period marked an “age of localism” (chihō no jidai), a
term that still resonates today.
OKINAWAN REVERSION AND EARLY
CRITIQUES OF MAINLAND ECONOMIC PLANNING
Within this political context, the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese control
diverged from these larger trends of the growth of local autonomy, in that
local sentiments were overwhelmed by central state priorities which sought
to “bring an end to the postwar period,” as stated by Prime Minister Satō
Eisaku, through the reacquisition by Japan of the Ryukyu and the Ogasawara
Islands. Consolidation of Okinawa in the reversion process meant the overwhelming Japanization of Okinawa in every manner, from the introduction of
yen currency, changing the vehicular right of way, and even the consolidation
of local political parties into branches of their mainland counterparts (with
the notable exception of the Okinawan Social Masses Party which remains
an independent local political party to this day).5 While basic expectations
around reversion would of course entail a certain amount of consolidation
and standardization with Japan, the main point of contention for Okinawans
is that standardization did not bring about the removal of U.S. military bases
or the sharing of military base burdens equally across Japan.
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It was following the period of transformation of the landscape of Okinawa
into a part of Japan that Okinawan residents increasingly came to voice dissatisfaction with centralization, particularly with the first Okinawa Promotion
and Development Plan developed by the Japanese government. Even in the
early period following reversion, local voices spoke out against the industryand development-oriented thinking behind it. As Nago City Mayor Toguchi
Yūtoku stated in 1973 in opposition to the plan:
Human beings have become enslaved to productionism, which results in the
destruction of the basis of our existence. Rather, we as citizens of Nago should
take as our goal the creation of the most favorable life environment . . . .We have
nothing to learn from the development law designed only to close the economic
gap with Japan (Asato 2003, 234).
Many local progressive activists, striking a position in keeping with their
counterparts on the mainland, saw the development-oriented plan as a direct
assault on their traditional way of life. In the same year, an organization dedicated to environmental protection called the Ten-Person Committee to Protect the Culture and Nature of Okinawa put forward a statement criticizing the
mainland companies that came in after reversion and carried out developmental projects at the expense of the local environment. Linking the destruction of
the environment to threats on Okinawan cultural life, they stated that “the loss
of the natural environment will lead to the loss of Okinawan thought” (Asato
2003, 237). These examples demonstrate the manner in which local activists,
in opposing the overarching developmental goals set by the central government, sounded out on environmental issues in ways that resonated with other
activists in the mainland.
EARLY REVERSION ERA PROPOSALS
FOR REGIONAL AUTONOMY IN OKINAWA
Even further, a number of academics also joined in local debates by suggesting different forms of autonomous formation in relation to the state. One of
the earliest proponents for local autonomy was Professor of Economics Taira
Kōji, an Okinawan scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
In an essay published in November 1970, he begins his discussion of autonomy by arguing for the need to “ardently insist on the restoration of rights
of an independent Ryukyuan nation (dokuritsu koku Ryukyu)” (Taira 1970,
96). Describing the manner in which Great Britain includes both English and
Scottish “nationals” or how in Switzerland, people identify as from Geneva
or as from Zurich, he highlighted the distinction between concepts such as
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
65
“nation” versus “nation-state” in order to broach an analysis of the position
of Okinawans vis-à-vis Japan. As he states, “I am first of all a Ryukyuan,
and while my ‘country’ is attached to the sovereign state of Japan from the
view of international law, I also have a structure of consciousness as being a
‘person of Japanese nationality’” (Taira 1970, 97). In considering the question of reversion, Taira argues that “the modernization of the Japan-Ryukyu
relationship must start from the recognition that the Ryukyus were an independent nation” (Taira 1970, 98), and supports his argument by discussing
the historical position of the Ryukyus under the Satsuma domain and later
under Japanese colonization, arguing that reversion represents a choice and a
chance to redefine the relationship between Okinawa and Japan. As he states,
“‘reversion’ can be taken as an application for a union of the Ryukyuan nation with the Japanese nation” (Taira 1970, 102), and thus, as equal parties to
this union, “reversion” should be undertaken only under conditions of mutual
assent. Taira takes great pains to point out that he is not denying reversion
out of a position of affirming U.S. rule, nor is he denying that the “‘Japanese’
and Ryukyuans are, in terms of ethnicity (minzoku), the same” (Taira 1970,
102), but he is stating that just because they share the “same ancestors” and
“same culture/language,” this doesn’t mean that they are fated to share the
same state.
Instead, Taira is arguing that there should be “equivalent exchanges”
(Taira 1970, 105) in the negotiations for “reversion” and that direct negotiations should take place between Okinawan and Japanese representatives to
determine these outcomes, as opposed to the secret U.S.-Japan negotiations
that have occurred up to that point. As he suggests, many of the frameworks
developed under U.S. authorities enhanced the qualities of Okinawa as being
similar to an independent state, but these advances represented hard won freedoms and human rights that Okinawans had fought for throughout the postwar
period. In contrast to the Japanese, who had a framework for constitutional
democracy implemented under U.S. occupation, Okinawans cannot reach
this same level of democratic freedom without altering their position under
the U.S. At the same time, Taira asserts that because democracy was given to
the Japanese, they have a low attachment to their democratic system, while
Okinawans have a strong desire for democracy, which is what the reversion
process was intended to entail. However, Taira counters, “reversion,” with its
language arguing for Okinawa to be “brought up to the level of the mainland”
(hondo-nami) is actually being relegated to a secondary status in the process,
since it is being lowered from what it was intended to be, which is a Ryukyu
Republic (Taira 1970, 107). Instead of a reversion without representation that
represents the loss of hard won Okinawan autonomy, Taira suggests “trying
an entirely new experiment in the center-periphery relationship,” posing the
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Chapter Four
suggestion that “If we succeed in replacing the prefectural system in Okinawa
with a new system of regional autonomy, it can be thought of as a possibility
for exerting an influence on other prefectures, through the hope that this special system would bring” (Taira 1970. 107). This change, he argues, would
be significant for bringing about “rapid progress in Japanese democracy.”
In raising this possibility, Taira refers to Article 95 of the Japanese Constitution and Article 261 of the Local Autonomy Law which he interprets as
allowing for the establishment of a “special autonomous body” (tokubetsu
jichitai) for Okinawa. Article 95 of the constitution refers to the manner in
which “a special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be
enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the
local public entity concerned.” Article 261 of the Local Autonomy Law enhances this position by detailing standards by which the passage of a special
law could be made applicable to a local public body. In order for this to occur,
the article states that such a law would have to be approved by either the Diet,
or the House of Councilors in an emergency session, and then would go to a
popular vote. Upon passage by a popular vote, such a proposal would be enacted into law. According to Taira, such a proposal for an Okinawan special
autonomous body would need to be approved by the majority of Okinawan
residents but could allow for the actualization of a form of amalgamation with
Japan that would be consistent with the idea of a merger between equals, as
a “contract between the Japanese nation and the Okinawan residents” (Taira
1970, 108). Taira even goes so far as to suggest that the title of Prince of the
Ryukyus could be added to the titles of the Japanese prince in recognition of
this merger (much as the royal family of Great Britain holds title over nations
such as Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland). Though Taira’s suggestions
in this article were somewhat short on specifics of what this special autonomous body would look like, his references to systems of government in Great
Britain and Switzerland suggest his hope for the recognition of multiple “nations” under the Japanese “nation-state.” This theme would later be explored
by Taira more fully in his 1974 treatise “An Essay on the Remodeling of the
Japanese Nation” (Nihon kaizō shiron), which also described the relativity
of the Japanese state and the idea of developing a federation of Japan with a
Ryukyuan nation, Ainu nation, and Korean nation having a greater level of
autonomy as equal partners in the Japanese state (Nakachi 2004, 9). In sum,
Taira’s argument for the possibility of creating a “special autonomous body”
under the terms of the constitution and Local Autonomy Law, along with his
argument for approaching reversion from a departure point that reasserts the
primacy of Okinawa’s particularity, provided an early foundation for later
local autonomy proposals.
Not more than a year later, Professor of Economics Kuba Masahiko,
from the University of the Ryukyus and chair of the university’s Economics
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
67
Research Institute, also suggested the development of a unique autonomous
system for Okinawa. In an article published in September 1971 he begins his
critique of the recently signed Okinawa Reversion Agreement by suggesting that a new system needs to be established in Okinawa since the goal of
reversion, to remove the military presence from Okinawa, has not been met.
As he stated:
The reversion to Japan that the Okinawan people have come to long for is not
simply for the movement of administrative authority from the hands of the U.S.
military to Japan. It is for the establishment of a new system for Okinawa which
will use the occasion of reversion in order to escape from the military bases and
secure peace. It’s because during the war and after, this island has continuously
been enveloped in this militaristic environment, and in regards to this, cannot
get used to it no matter what. Therefore, reversion to Japan is not what was
promised to Okinawa as the removal of military bases (Kuba 1971, 138–139).
Thus Kuba suggests that in contrast to the mainland view that stressed reversion as a recovery of prewar administrative rights and territory, that Okinawan
people instead sought a removal of the military bases and the establishment of
peace. Even further, reversion will subsume Okinawan issues under the framework of national politics, and “the will of the Okinawan people will sadly be
buried in the middle of the [mainland] residents’ general will,” a process that
will silence Okinawan demands and result in the “Japanification of Okinawa”
(Kuba 1971, 139). With the memory of the Battle of Okinawa still strong in
his mind, Kuba argues that the post-reversion arrangement will place Okinawa
at the frontlines of conflict with China, and even worse, could lead to another
wartime tragedy in Okinawa, because of the presence of the military bases.
Kuba follows this cautionary statement with an economic discussion which
critiques the post-reversion development plans that have been offered thus far
by the central government and offers suggestions and concerns of his own.
To begin with, he points out the manner in which the central government has
overemphasized the promotion of industrialization in Okinawa as a spur to
development. According to Kuba, this emphasis on industry will bring about
maldistribution, with the accumulation of negative impacts on the air, earth,
and water of Okinawa and in this emphasis on environmental impacts can be
seen echoes of mainland environmental movements. Instead of industrialization-led development, he argues instead that:
Therefore, Okinawan development should be able to push forward in a form
that at its foundation maintains a cycle of harmony between nature and human
life. If we describe this clearly, it wouldn’t stop as merely being a development
for Okinawa, but in the name of an “Okinawan system,” a new pattern of local
development can also become a good reference of development for every region
of Japan (Kuba 1971, 142).
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Chapter Four
The kind of development model or “Okinawa system” that he seeks would
be one that would include the preservation of Okinawan natural spaces
as a resource instead of intensifying negative impacts that infringe on the
health and welfare of its residents. Kuba then discusses water, power, and
transportation limitations that hamper development options, while stressing
Okinawa’s potential as a place for transshipment of agricultural products, for
labor intensive industries, for international scale businesses that are suitable
to Okinawa, and for tourism.
In order to develop this “Okinawa system” Kuba points out the manner
in which local autonomy on the mainland has been eroded, especially in regards to environmental policies, and stresses three reasons for arguing why
Okinawa should become a “special autonomous region” (tokubetsu jichi
chiiki). The first is a pointed critique of the history of discrimination that
Okinawans experienced while under Japanese control and a fear of becoming
marginalized in national affairs once again. The second is an emphasis on the
“long, bitter struggle for democracy” (Kuba 1971, 146) that Okinawa passed
through in the postwar period that allowed for the acquisition of substantial
and large scale rights of administration, taxation, education, and legislation
that he fears will be lost in being subsumed under Japan. The third reason is
the way in which developing a special autonomous region would put Okinawa at the forefront of new thinking about the local-center relationship.
Especially when considering the first two reasons stated here, with their emphasis on the particular history of the Okinawans in the prewar and postwar
periods, Kuba provides important evidence of the particularity of Okinawans’
historical consciousness. For Kuba, the development of a special autonomous
region informed by this consciousness will allow for the formation of a situation where “politics is the art of possibilities,” instead of a situation where
“politics is the art of killing possibilities” (Kuba 1971, 147) as seen with the
current reversion plan.
In December 1971, Professor of Political Science Higa Mikio of the
University of the Ryukyus6 published another important contribution to the
discussion of Okinawan autonomy, by also proposing the creation of an Okinawan autonomous state in the time period prior to the implementation of
reversion. In this seminal work on Okinawan autonomy, Higa, writing only
six months after the signing of the Okinawa Reversion Agreement between
the U.S. and Japan, begins his discussion of the current context by suggesting
that the reversion agreement is nothing less than a “third disposition (shobun)
of Okinawa,” hearkening back to the first disposition of the Ryukyus in 1879
when the Ryukyu Kingdom was forcefully integrated into Japan as Okinawa
Prefecture, and invoking what many consider to be the “second disposition”
of the Ryukyus in the forced U.S. administration imposed on Okinawa in the
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
69
aftermath of World War II. In assessing the reversion movement, Higa, like
Kuba, suggests that the reversion movement should not be seen as an uncritical movement for reversion to the Japanese “motherland,” but instead, that
the reversion movement had other goals related to a recovering of Okinawan
sovereignty. As he states:
The goal of the reversion movement has come to be expressed in various terms
such as the removal of the one-sided oppression of Okinawa as a sacrifice, the
need to break from being under alien rule, and the anti-war/peace movement as
motivated against the effective rule by and maintenance of U.S. military bases,
among others. But above all, it is about recapturing the rights of administration
granted to the U.S. which has ignored the Okinawan residents’ will, and it is
a realization of the democratic principles of people’s sovereignty (Higa 1971,
134).
Since the reversion movement had failed to accomplish many of its goals, especially regarding the removal of the U.S. military bases, Higa considers that
further action must be taken in order to realize Okinawan objectives. From
this point, he argues for regional autonomy as an extension of the reversion
movement, stating that “It can be said that the Okinawan residents’ fight to
acquire rights of autonomy also seeks to realize the idea of people’s sovereignty. What is meant by this is that the fight for autonomy has a closely connected relationship with the reversion movement” (Higa 1971, 134). Thus,
for Higa, the goals of the Okinawan reversion movement, as expressed by the
Okinawan people themselves, have been ignored, and these underlying goals
can now be expressed within the context of the push for regional autonomy.
Two aspects underlie his critique of wholehearted assimilation of Okinawa
solely as another mainland-style Japanese prefecture. The first aspect involves a critique of local autonomy as it has been actualized in the mainland.
For while there has indeed been a growth of practices that by their appearance resemble having greater local autonomy, Higa considers that central
government direction and supervision, coupled with the emphasis on agencydelegated functions has meant that in terms of local prefectural autonomy,
that “there is no big change from the prewar period” (Higa 1971, 135). At
this point Higa raises a second aspect that is a position more specific to Okinawan history, which, like Kuba, is based on a continued awareness of prior
discrimination at the hands of the Japanese. As he states:
Respect for the will of the people in the democratic principle was denied under
prewar Japanese rule, and they were forced to experience discrimination from
Japan in various forms, so that Okinawan residents are very conscious of this
principle. The abolition of oppressive discrimination is the most important thing
70
Chapter Four
in the political culture of Okinawa, and the valuation of this greatly influences
Okinawan residents’ political actions (Higa 1971, 135).
The particularity of Higa’s position can be seen in the use of language that
refers to the “sacrifice” of Okinawa and the “obligation of the nation to correct the gap with the mainland” (Higa 1971, 137). One of the ways that Japan
can do this is to develop Okinawa as an autonomous region that will ensure
that the hard fought autonomy that the Okinawans have claimed through the
postwar period will not be lost.
In fact, a great deal of Higa’s argument is that contemporary Okinawan
autonomy will be greatly reduced under the terms of the reversion agreement.
As he relates, “The results of the autonomy struggle that the Okinawan residents have waged for a long time are that the Ryukyu government, in terms
of legislative, administrative, judiciary, and other fields, has come to exercise a substantial and large amount of power” (Higa 1971, 136). Wholesale
standardization will mean that mainland laws that Okinawans had no input in
will be applied to Okinawa regardless of local particularities. The strength of
the publicly elected Ryukyu government executive to grant permissions and
approvals will be appropriated by the central government. And even further,
the distance of the judiciary from Okinawa will mean that geographic and
administrative blocks will hamper Okinawan initiatives under the law. Part
of Higa’s critique is that the current government in the Ryukyus has taken an
overly conciliatory line with the mainland government, and, echoing Taira
Kōji’s critiques, suggests that this submissiveness to prefectural standardization will only end up reinforcing Okinawa’s marginal status.
In contrast, Higa argues for a revitalized sense of autonomy as defined
in the formation of a special autonomous “Okinawa-shū” or an Okinawan
“state” (a “state” in the same sense that California is a state of the U.S., thus
hinting at support for a federal model of government). The starting point for
this autonomous body would be the recognition that “the authority of ruling
oneself is originally in the possession of the residents” (Higa 1971, 138)
and not the nation, and would involve the stance that administrative rights
should not be “reverted” to mainland control but instead should be reverted
to the government of the Okinawan people. Even further, these rights should
be strengthened and expanded. Within this special autonomous body, this
Okinawa-shū would “maintain all rights outside of military and diplomatic
rights, etc., and specific related authority” (Higa 1971, 138). Even though
such military and diplomatic rights will be held by the central government,
he states that in both of these areas “it is needless to say that the will of the
Okinawan residents needs to be adequately reflected” (Higa 1971, 138) despite being ignored up until now. Additionally, in terms of the chief executive, or “special autonomous body administrative chair,” of this Okinawa-
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
71
shū, this chair would be elected by a general vote, and would not be directly
supervised by the central government. All rights of approval and permission
would be exercised by this chair, and this chair would not be beholden to
administer and execute delegated functions from the central government, in
contrast to the setting up of a centrally directed Okinawan development office
as stipulated in the reversion agreement. In terms of the legislature, it should
be entrusted with the task of determining the applicability of mainland laws,
and in terms of the judiciary, it should allow for the receiving of trials by Okinawan residents in their locality. Higa also suggests that a number of special
measures need to be developed as part of the formation of this Okinawa-shū.
The first aspect involves the importance of acknowledging that the “autonomous body, more than the nation or central government, should be borne as
the responsibility of local residents” (Higa 1971, 140). Secondly, in the area
of finance, special assistance and treasury investments and loans should be
developed, and special tax allocations in the form of special finance measures
should be enacted.
Higa closes his argument by suggesting three general reasons to support
the establishment of this special autonomous body. The first relates to the
basic need to support a universal value of grassroots democracy. The second
relates to recognizing the unique character of Okinawa as not only geographically distant from the mainland, but also as having a distinct historical and
cultural background, with an “oppositional consciousness to “Yamato” (Higa
1971, 141). With its unique postwar history, Higa argues that Okinawa operated in a “position as a semi-independent nation” (han dokuritsu kokuteki
chii) possessing a hard-won level of authority and autonomy. The third and final argument is related to Higa’s appeal for the establishment of an Okinawan
special autonomous body as a contribution to the establishment of regional
autonomy as a principle that can expand notions of mainland autonomy.
A year after reversion, Chūō University Professor of Economics Noguchi
Yūichirō also suggested that Okinawa should pursue the goal of autonomy
in a June 1973 article. Considering that the implementation of reversion had
caused a number of “blocked conditions” to develop, ranging from reversion inflation, rising unemployment due to the cornering of the local goods
market by mainland tourism capital, and what he calls the “zaibatsu-fication”
of mainland administration efforts (in this case, referring to the dominating impact of mainland corporate capital in Okinawa), he felt that a new
“starting point of reform” was needed to shake Okinawa out of its sleep.
Noguchi outlines two aspects critical to this position, namely that first “this
political purpose must have a wholeness of the kind that the ‘reversion to
the homeland’ goal had,” and secondly, “that this political condition will be
able to reverse the established truth of reversion to the mainland” (Noguchi
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1973, 234–235). Suggesting that in the end it did not matter so much if an
autonomous state would result in an independent state or a federal one, the
main point for him was “the rapid strengthening of the regional solidarity
of the Okinawan residents,” with the added caveat that any such proposal
“dismantles the centralization of power that had laid over Okinawa from the
Meiji period forward, and has the aim of putting politics back in the hands of
the residents” (Noguchi 1973, 236). Thus, for Noguchi, not only is the push
for local autonomy focused on the return of democratic control to Okinawans,
but inherent in his historical references is a critique of the forced integration
of Okinawa by Japan.
That said, Noguchi does suggest a number of reasons for why he favors
an “Okinawan autonomous state” (Okinawa jichi-shū) over other potential
forms of autonomy. He begins by stating that he is not deeply attached to his
particular envisioning of an autonomous state, suggesting that any political
shape that allows for rights of autonomy would suffice, whether it would be
an independent state, a federation, an autonomous state, or a special autonomous region (Noguchi 1973, 237). He even goes so far as to say that “If we
seek Okinawan residents rights to autonomy in its most complete form, the
natural logic is that Okinawan would become an independent state (dokuritsu
kokka)” (Noguchi 1973, 237). However, in terms of an independent state, he
notes that though a number of ideas of independence have been suggested by
other intellectuals, that “from the view of what is even now a small ethnic
consciousness among the Okinawan prefectural residents, this will probably
not be accepted” (Noguchi 1973, 237). This low assessment of Okinawan
ethnic solidarity can also be seen in Noguchi’s terminology that generally
eschews such terms as “Okinawan people” in favor of the phrase “Okinawan
residents.” In addition to this critique, Noguchi also suggests that projects
such as the European Economic Community show that the global tide is moving toward greater integration, not separation. In terms of the second option
of forming a federated state (renpō kokka) where the central state retains only
the rights to diplomacy and defense, and the localities maintain judicial, legislative, and administrative powers, Noguchi feels that such a proposal will
require constitutional revision, a potential that he considers highly unlikely.
Even further, since for “modern day Okinawa, the peace constitution has
become the main grounds for resisting rule by the mainland” (Noguchi 1973,
237), he seems to argue that opening issues of constitutional revision for the
purposes of federalization could simultaneously endanger the peace constitution. In addition, he notes the impracticality of establishing either an independent state or a federation so soon after the implementation of reversion,
suggesting that an autonomous state is more feasible (Noguchi 1973, 238).
Finally, in terms of a “special autonomous region” (tokubetsu jichi-ku) as pro-
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
73
posed by Yokohama City Mayor Asukata Ichio (of the Japan Socialist Party),
in contrast to Noguchi’s conception of an “autonomous state,” Asukata’s proposal is situated philosophically in the framework of national local autonomy,
and as such “it does not have the initiative of seeking decentralization of the
central government from the point of view that rights to autonomy are rights
particular to a region’s residents” (Noguchi 1973, 237). Thus, Noguchi’s
proposed autonomous state occupies a different positionality in relation to
decentralization debates, that achieves not only administrative decentralization, but political decentralization as well, and can reach these goals without
requiring constitutional revision and the dangers that this would entail.
In ways similar to Higa, Noguchi gives some detail to his idea of what
an Okinawan autonomous state would look like. The first aspect of what he
seeks is the transfer of administrative duties from the central government
to the state government, as headed by a state governor. Administrative duties previously held by the prefecture and nation, including the Okinawa
development office and national branch offices, would in turn be moved to
the shi-chō-son (city-town-village) level, and he argues that this “heightened
shi-chō-son knowledge of autonomy itself is the political foundation of an
autonomous state” (Noguchi 1973, 238). Under his proposal, educational
systems and police forces would also be reformed to have greater autonomy
from the central government, in contrast to their current subordinated status.
In contrast to the unicameral prefectural assembly, a bicameral system with
direct election of representatives would be adopted, with substantially stronger powers over rules and regulations. The judiciary would be separated from
the nation, with city courts as the main avenues for civil affairs and criminal
cases, and with the strengthening of the citizen examination system of high
court judges. A phased-in adoption of public elections of judges with a juror
system would also be sought. Finally, in terms of local finances, the ratio of
income, corporate, and liquor taxes that are distributed to localities could be
raised, and in addition, a special system of distributing local tax grants would
also be developed.
From this point, Noguchi expands on this discussion by addressing three
major points that deal with issues of development, the local-center relationship, and the issue of foreign relations and national defense. In terms of
development, Noguchi echoes Higa Mikio in pointing out the failures of the
Okinawa Development Bureau, noting a number of “broken promises” that
included the unwillingness of the central government to address inflation
brought on by the Ocean Exposition planned for 1975 and the rising rates of
unemployment. Like Higa, he suggests that the development bureau should
be disbanded and replaced with a local development bureau under the state
governor, and should involve plans to “reorganize the Ryukyu Bank as a
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state-operated bank which can issue bonds, and establish an ‘Okinawa development bank’ specializing in financial development” (Noguchi 1973, 240).
This would allow it to receive contributions from mainland Japanese banks
and also respond more directly to the state governor, thus increasing Okinawan self-reliance. In terms of reconceptualizing the local-center relationship, Noguchi proceeds by proposing the creation of “consultative adjustment
committees” which would be situated between the nation and the shi-chō-son
and not simply be in a position to deny national pressures on the shi-chō-son,
but would be actively involved in working to actualize shi-chō-son requests
at the national level. In addition, these committee representatives would serve
as observers in central government cabinet meetings and ministerial advisory
committees, thus increasing information access and transparency. Even further, Noguchi argues for the formation of the “autonomous state’s foreign
relations and defense committee,” which would promote the particularity of
Okinawa’s regional position and serve as a “substantial brake regarding the
exercise of the rights of diplomacy and defense that are monopolized by the
central government” (Noguchi 1973, 241). This committee would be connected directly to the state governor, and would also be empowered to be
able to exercise independent diplomatic actions, with the main limit being
that while able to criticize central government policies, the committee would
be prohibited in acting contrary to national policy. In this way, Noguchi’s
proposal seeks to structurally assert a means by which Okinawans will not
only exert greater local autonomy, but will be strengthened at least in their
capacity as observers to monitor and influence national affairs.
From this point Noguchi expands on the issue of diplomacy and defense
by suggesting that with the enactment of an autonomous state that Okinawa
should issue a statement that, first, will call for the withdrawal of Japanese
Self-Defense Forces, second, will demand the withdrawal of all U.S. military
bases within three years, and third, will issue a “Declaration of Okinawan Demilitarization” (in conjunction with the national government if possible) (Noguchi 1973, 242). Such an act, he argues, would serve not only to reflect the
popular will of the Okinawan people (which have suffered under increasing
post-reversion militarization with the situating of Japanese SDF forces in Okinawa), but would also send a message of friendship to China and North Korea,
while providing a powerful example of anti-militarism to the world. Such an
action would also serve to stimulate discussion about how best to pursue a
path of “unarmed neutrality” which can only proceed, according to Noguchi,
through the “limited demilitarization” of Japan’s territorial extremities.
Noguchi then concludes his discussion by bringing forward a discussion
of dōshūsei, especially in regards to recent proposals to develop a regionally
conglomerated autonomous state in Kyushu. While Noguchi acknowledges
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
75
some debts to this discussion as led by Hayashida Kazuhiro and Teshima
Takashi of the “30-Person Committee to Consider Tomorrow’s West Japan,”
he argues that the key difference between his articulation of an autonomous
state and other forms of dōshūsei are in the way in which the Okinawan
autonomous state would emphasize rights of autonomy as arising from the
bottom-up instead of the way in which many dōshūsei efforts have originated
as top-down initiatives (Noguchi 1973, 244). Noguchi concludes his article
by noting that suggestions to include Okinawa into a Kyushu dōshūsei are
premature, and that it is especially important to bear in mind the role that
Kyushu played in advancing mainland rule in Okinawa, as well as the lack
of existing consensus in Kyushu around the vital point of demilitarization,
which is so critical to any discussions of autonomy in Okinawa.
CONCLUSION
In considering the works of these four different theorists, a number of important points of convergence can be seen (see Table 4.1). The first involves
their common critiques regarding the terms of the reversion agreement, with
some like Taira arguing that reversion has become a ruse in which calls for
“hondo nami” (equalization with the homeland) will subordinate Okinawa to
Japan once again, and with others like Higa arguing forcefully that the push for
reversion was to realize the “democratic principles of people’s sovereignty,”
a goal that will be set back even further through amalgamation with Japan
and the loss of hard-won advances in autonomy. The second point of convergence concerns the question of the political relationship between Okinawa
and Japan, with both Taira and Noguchi stressing the desirability of an “independent Ryukyuan nation” or Okinawan “independent state,” as a realization
of Okinawan autonomy in its most complete form, though Taira suggests
that national integrity and local autonomy can still be maintained within the
context of a revamped Japanese federal system, while Noguchi focuses more
on his perception of a lack of strong Okinawan ethnic solidarity, which he
sees as precluding the possibility of coalescing around independent nationstate formation. The third perspective that comes up amongst these different
theorists concerns the question of development and its relationship to the local
community and the environment, with Kuba critiquing the industrializationled development vision that dominated central government thinking, and with
Noguchi emphasizing the lack of control that localities in Okinawa have over
setting policies and plans, and in controlling fiscal disbursements. The final
perspective that bridges these many proposals concerns the question of resident sovereignty and of democratic access, with Taira emphasizing the idea
Professor of Economics,
University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Professor of Economics,
University of the
Ryukyus
Taira Kōji
Professor of Political
Science, University
of the Ryukyus
Professor of Economics,
Chūō University
Higa Mikio
Noguchi Yūichirō
Kuba Masahiko
Title
Name
“special autonomous
region” (tokubetsu jichi
chiiki)
“Okinawan state”
(Okinawa-shū)
September 1971
December 1971
“Okinawan autonomous
state” (Okinawa jichishū)
“special autonomous body”
(tokubetsu jichitai)
November 1970
June 1973
Name of Formation
Year of Proposal
Table 4.1. Summary Chart of Reversion-Era Autonomy Proposals
Suggestions of federal formation;
critique of hondo-nami; Provides
legal basis for autonomous state.
Critiques reversion as having failed
to remove military bases; Raises
questions about the proper
starting point for development.
Sees reversion as weakening hardwon autonomy; Provides first
proposal stating governmental
structure.
Seeks to break up blocked
perspectives; Advances
discussion on governmental
structure; Stress on development,
diplomacy, and defense.
Key Aspects
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
77
of “equivalent exchanges” between Okinawan and Japanese representatives
as a way of reasserting Okinawan democratic voices, and with Kuba and
Higa highlighting how easily Okinawans have been marginalized in Japanese
society in the past, and how they can be just as easily subsumed in the future.
Finally, for Noguchi, the emphasis on investing power in the shi-chō-son level
helps to combat the impositions of the central government that have occurred
since the Meiji period, particularly around issues of development, diplomacy,
and defense. In all of these four major themes, a range of perspectives contests Okinawan acquiescence to reversion on the terms set by the central
government, and reasserts an Okinawan position for self-determination and
democracy.
Though some can argue that these proposals, circulating as they did within
specialized journals targeted toward an elite audience, had little immediate
impact on the local citizenry at the time of reversion, they would eventually
become critically important as the foundational basis and the opening salvoes
for later debates to follow. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Okinawan proposals for regional autonomy would continue to flourish and deepen in their
perspective, hardening into much more concrete proposals for autonomy, and
even charters with clearly described structures for autonomous governments.
Even today, a range of intellectual and activist organizations and centers for
scholarly inquiry continue to debate many of the same issues raised in these
earlier proposals for autonomy. Emerging as they did during the early 1970s,
the autonomy proposals described in this chapter helped to pave the way for
these later developments by delineating the rationale and legal principles that
could be used to justify, within the constraints of Japanese domestic law, an
articulated position of Okinawan difference.
Some contemporary scholars, such as Professor Shimabukuro Jun of University of the Ryukyus, in discussing issues of local autonomy, have argued
that the core of these debates revolves around the “story” of the nation itself.
Arguing that the forming of the Japanese national myth of the nation was not
one solely predicated on the idea of Japan as a “land of the gods centered
on the emperor” (Shimabukuro 2009, 26), Shimabukuro argues that a liberal
story of Japan’s national formation based on the equality of individuals and
universal human rights also emerged, but became submerged under Japanese
militarism and war. The postwar constitution and the continuing reference to
the emperor system continued to maintain this dominant position, and disallowed the possibility of those people who did not hold the emperor system
as reflecting their mythology of ancestral origins, like the Okinawans, from
envisioning themselves as a part of the Japanese nation. Shimabukuro argues
that the debates over autonomy are linked to the push by Okinawan people
to expand and reframe the idea of the Japanese nation to align itself with the
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Chapter Four
liberal view of the nation, much as the formation of the European Union has
forced European nations to embrace a liberal view of citizenship that stands
in contrast to the more exclusionary nationalisms of prior ages. Much as
scholars writing during the period of reversion had also argued for the revision of the Japanese state form to be more inclusive of Okinawan particularity, Shimabukuro ultimately suggests that the question of autonomy centers
around whether or not Japan can embrace and respect the diversity that had
always marked its existence.
The continuing emphasis on a new form of regional relationship with the
central state in the context of debates around autonomy, perhaps mirroring the
“Two systems, one country” formation that had been arranged for Hong Kong
in relation to China, has remained eminently provocative. It remains unclear,
however, how Hong Kong democracy protests in the fall and winter of 2014
will temper such perspectives, having shown the limits of local autonomy and
democracy movements when faced against the priorities of a strong central
government. Other movements for regional autonomy such as in the province
of Quebec in Canada, or Scotland in the United Kingdom, provide additional
contemporary models of comparison for regional autonomy, though these
comparisons demonstrate that while modern nations today have been willing
to accommodate growing local movements for autonomy through the concession of limited local rights, that when such movements combine to push for
actual independence through popular referenda, that ultimately, secession
may not seem as attractive to local residents when compared with the continuance of a more moderated federal position. That said, though not often
seen as being as dramatic as movements for independence, local autonomy
movements have other potentials. As scholar Kelly Dietz comments:
Although counter-intuitive, by seeking to re-work their relationship to the state
rather than pushing for independence, Okinawans and their counterparts making
similar challenges elsewhere present the greater challenge to state sovereignty.
They seek to re-work the state-citizen relation, rather than reproduce it (Dietz
2010, 197).
By expanding the definition of regional autonomy in the context of a Japanese postwar system that had largely emphasized the role of the central state
in many of its planning processes, Okinawan local leaders are at the forefront
of a new wave of politicians and activists demanding a reworking of the state.
In contrast to the Westphalian norm “which sought to link one state to one
territory,” their “repeated proposals for federalism suggest alternative visions
for relating peoples and territories within state structures” (Howland and
White 2009, 16). The main difference between Okinawa and other localities,
however, exists in Okinawans’ continued position as ethnic minorities from a
Reversion-Era Proposals for Okinawan Regional Autonomy
79
once independent island state, who had been forcefully assimilated into Japan
as an oft-forgotten colony. Though the central government may exhibit reticence to allow for a “one country, two systems” formation in Japan, the unequal base burdens and continuing special measures and laws that have been
enacted in regards to Okinawa have already created a situation of particularity
in Okinawa. As scholar Taira Kōji has noted, “these special measures impart
to Okinawa Prefecture’s government and politics characteristics that are
considerably different from those of other prefectures of Japan. Okinawa and
the rest of Japan are in fact ‘two systems’ already” (Taira 2002, xxii). In this
sense, creating a unique system for Okinawa may just well serve as a simple
recognition of what Okinawans, faced with continuing structural discrimination throughout the postwar period, have already known for a very long time.
NOTES
1. This chapter is excerpted from a larger dissertation on Okinawan nationalism.
Research funding for this dissertation came from a Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship and a Hosei University International Foundation Foreign Scholars
Fellowship.
2. In using the term shobun, protest organizers were most likely consciously drawing parallels to the shobun, or “disposition” of the Ryukyu Kingdom (more properly
described as an “invasion,” starting from 1872) that signaled the annexation of the
Ryukyus under Japanese control.
3. For a further exploration of the various postwar movements for Okinawan independence and an exploration of the difference between the independence movements
and the position of the hanfukkiron-sha, which arose during the time of reversion and
which took a somewhat anarchist position in its condemnation not only of reversion
to the Japanese state but also in terms of its’ attack on the nation-state system itself,
please refer to Chapter 2 of the author’s own dissertation (Yokota 2017).
4. An admirable book length treatment on grassroots citizens’ anti-war movements
in the AMPO period is Sasaki-Uemura (2001).
5. For a brief discussion of party politics vis-à-vis the mainland, please refer to
Arasaki (1998).
6. Higa would later enter political service as the vice governor of Okinawa under
Governor Nishime Junji, who served in office from 1978–1990.
Chapter Five
Beyond Minority History
Okinawa Korea People’s Solidarity and
Internationalization of the Okinawa Struggle
Shinnosuke Takahashi
Deep in the forest of Yanbaru region in northern Okinawa Island is a village
called Takae. The quiet morning in this rainforest allows us to hear the sounds
of birds humming from here and there—a sound that is generally replaced
with the noise from the car engines in the southern part of the island, which
is more populated and industrialized. Since summer 2007, this village, one of
the least populated places in Okinawa, has become one of the most tumultuous places in Okinawa. The local villagers have conducted sit-in against the
construction of six helicopter landing zones across their village. When I first
visited this village in November 2011, all the main gates for the construction
sites were blocked by protesters with their vans and buses. There, I found
a white cloth attached to the window of one of the vehicles. This cloth displayed an image of a dancing woman in the traditional Korean female clothes.
She was surrounded by images of tanks, bomb shells and other weapons. On
a corner of the textile was written “From Gangjeong, Jeju, the year 2011.”
The anti-US base campaign in Okinawa, or the so-called Okinawa struggle,
tends to be discussed within the domestic context. In other words, the notion
of Okinawa struggle gives us a sense that it is a social struggle, unique to Okinawa’s local historical experience. However, this interpretation can mislead
us into only a partial understanding of what the local movement has been.
When I conducted my year-long fieldwork, I was introduced to many civic
activists from overseas—the United States (including Guam and Hawaii),
Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines. If not activists, I saw journalists from France, Germany and the UK reporting on the latest stories of the
Okinawa struggle. The above anecdote about the cloth is just one example
from my experience, and yet, informs me of the crucial fact that even such
remote area is connected to the global and regional networks of anti-base
civic activism.
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Chapter Five
In recent years, the number of scholarship on the Okinawan movement
from various transnational perspectives is also becoming significant. Among
them are the historical research on the temporary solidarity movements between the Okinawan youths, mainland Japanese anti-Vietnam War campaigners, and the drafted American soldiers, which contained a certain number of
African American civil rights activists, in Okinawa. Kosuzu Abe (2008) and
Yuichiro Ōnishi (2009) have analyzed the ideological constellation of antiimperialism, anti-racism and anti-colonialism in the United States, Japan, and
Okinawa that was vital to create the transnational alliance in Okinawa during
the 1960s and early 1970s. Their research similarly highlights the fact that
such a peripheral place as Okinawa was once a crucial place of transnational
anti-colonial campaigning. This also compels us to re-consider our views on
the history of the Okinawan movement by placing it in a wider global history of progressive political movement. In other words, this is an emblematic
event which shows a radical possibility to imagine what Angela Davis calls
the “unlikely coalitions” across different political identity, which have been
understood separately. (Davis 1997: 322 cited in Ōnishi 2009: 180).
Also, Miyume Tanji (2008) and Kelly Dietz (2016) study the trans-pacific
anti-base campaigns between Okinawans and overseas activists. Tanji unravels the background story of the lawsuit in San Francisco where the U.S. Federal Court gave a verdict that the U.S. State Department had violated National
Historic Preseveration Act by endangering dugongs and other natural species
in Okinawa due to the U.S. marine bases. While Tanji focuses on the environmentalist network between Okinawa and the United States, Dietz highlights an emerging political movement joined by Chamorros in Guam and
Ryūkyūans in Okinawa. In doing so, she tries to re-frame the geo-politics of
the base problems in the Pacific from the perspective of the indigenous movement. Despite methodological, disciplinary and perspectival differences, the
wider cultural and social relations that the Okinawan movement have forged
over the years is common to these previous studies. In other words, these
studies similarly highlight Okinawa’s entanglement in global social contexts.
Yet, the criticality of this “unlikely coalition” across the Pacific is not only to
show the diverse networks which are deployed beyond the local or national
boundaries, but also to call into a question how we understand the locality of
the “Okinawa” struggle, and to scrutinize what they are really struggling for.
In the field of Okinawa studies, particularly studies on the local anti-base
struggle, the transnational approach sprang from the context of the critique
of Area Studies. As the Cold War in Europe was ending, and the discourse
of globalization was mushrooming, Area Studies as a discipline experienced
various criticisms from many directions due to its strategic involvement with
the government policy (see for example, Appadurai 1996, and Wallerstein
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83
1998). Japanese Studies, in which Okinawa is included, was no exception.
Critics called into question the culturalists’ accounts of the history and society of modern Japan, and the power-relations that are operated domestically
and internationally (Harootunian and Miyoshi 1993, 2002; Miyoshi 1994;
Morris-Suzuki 1998). In this context, Okinawa’s modern experience as “minority” or Japan’s “margin” was regarded as significant to unsettle the ideology of culturalism by positing the different social and historical contexts from
within. For scholars in Japan, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere,
particularly early career scholars, Okinawa became one of the prominent sites
to intervene in the homogeneous representation of modern Japan, and the
power structure upon which the array of Japaneseness was reproduced, and
open it to the wider regional and global issues.
However, it is also important to note that the enactment of Okinawa’s
political and cultural identity as Japan’s minority is a double-edged sword.
While Okinawa’s position as “margin” can lay a foundation for the critical
investigation to all the exclusivity of the Japan’s national discourse, it can
also reinforce the monolithic representation of Okinawa, by placing it in disconnected world, and by overlooking internal conflicts and social dynamics.
In this context, I find Minoru Hokari’s critical analysis on minority history
useful. Drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe (2007),
Hokari, an historian of Australian indigenous people, says that the concept
of “minority history” contains the possible risk of “marginalization of minority” by emphasizing its “inferiority”—whether it is critical or not—vis-à-vis
the national or the mainstream historical narrative. He also argues that any
attempts to write minority history in a “less minor” way is also problematic
because it often subsumes it into another form of master narrative. What is
really missing in the debate on “minority” and “majority” in history writings,
he says, is the influence of colonial modernity that determines the categorical
division that we use today. (Hokari 2003: 87) From this perspective, Hokari
proposed to highlight the connectivity between/among “minorities” in order
to examine “our ways of thinking of history and of knowledge construction”
(Hokari 2003: 90).
What I understand as the critical contribution of the transnational perspective is that it carefully avoids identity politics but lays out an alternative geopolitical map upon which the connectivity and similarity of political and social conditions between Okinawa and other places became visible—whether
derived from colonialism or environmental destruction. In other words, one
of the important elements of Abe, Ōnishi and others’ works is that they problematize the meanings of the Okinawan anti-base movement, and the overall
structure of the US-Japan security alliance, by re-placing Okinawa in the connected world with other social struggles across national and local boundaries.
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Chapter Five
Their works not only illuminate the shared histories of “minorities” between
Okinawa and other societies in the northern Pacific but ultimately showed
the multilayered or multileveled historical experiences within the Okinawa
struggle.
In this spirit, I would like to discuss the formation of Okinawa’s multiscale historical consciousness by examining its connectivity with anti-base
activism in East Asia. While the previous studies mostly highlight the northern Pacific, East Asia is also a crucial place to reconsider the continuity and
change of hegemonic powers which formulates the political and social orders
in Okinawa. On the one hand, since the end of World War II Okinawa has
been considered as a strategic basis of “the western Pacific” for the United
States, but, on the other hand, it has been one of the key national frontiers
throughout the history of modern Japan, facing the Chinese continent and
Taiwan. Furthermore, since the time of the Korean War (1950–1953), the
military bases and ports in Okinawa and South Korea have been deployed
within the same command of the U.S. 5th Air Force and 7th Fleet. Were there
any flows of civic interaction on the U.S. bases in East Asia? If so, how did
such kind of transnational networks emerge? What was the common concern
which connects the local activism in different places? From a perspective that
brings to the fore the global and regional networks of anti-base civic activism, this chapter explores the roots of local internationalism in Okinawa. As
the Okinawan activists forge overseas networks, the number of scholarships
about the Okinawan struggle in history and other disciplines from transnational aspects also increases. While many of those existing studies highlight
the events, we also need to understand the historical process by which the local internationalism emerged. This perspective gives us a sense to understand
how the Okinawan movement finally became an international or transnational
movement and what social and intellectual contexts lie underneath. To this
end, I examine the historical background of Okinawa Korea People’s Solidarity (OKPS), one of the first local civic groups which initiated internationalization of the Okinawan anti-base activism as a case study. The history of OKPS
contributes to the intellectual debates on civic activism, historical relations,
and transnationalism in contemporary Asia and Pacific region. Also, through
the case study of OKPS, this paper would reveal another story of “the Okinawa struggle” beyond the confinement of its territorial boundary.
OKINAWA KOREA PEOPLE’S SOLIDARITY
OKPS was founded in 1998 by five male activists from Okinawa and mainland Japan—Nishio Ichirō, Tomiyama Masahiro, Takahashi Toshio, To
Beyond Minority History
85
Yusa, and Arasaki Moriteru. Arasaki is a senior academic known for his
research on the history of the Okinawan people’s anti-base struggle after
World War II. Based at Okinawa University since 1974 (where he served as
the university´s president in the 1980s), Arasaki has been one of the frontrunners of this research field. Besides his commitment to the anti-base movement as an academic, Arasaki had been involved in founding many activist
projects in Okinawa, most notably the Society of Hitotsubo Anti-war Land
Owners.1 Tomiyama Masahiro has been an active participant of the anti-base
movement since his teenage years. While Arasaki has devoted himself to the
movement through intellectual work, Tomiyama has always been involved
through anti-base activism in the frontline of confrontation.
While Arasaki and Tomiyama have their ancestral roots from Okinawa,
Takahashi Toshio came originally from the mainland in the early 1980s. He
had been known as the leader of a radical sect of student activism when he
lived in the mainland prior to his relocation to Okinawa in the mid-1980s.
Nishio also originated from the mainland, but has been involved in activism in Okinawa for the last four decades. As a radical pastor whose usual
activities are missionary activity and running a local kindergarten, Nishio is
also known for his long-term involvement with peace and ecology activism.
To Yusa, too, became involved with OKPS from outside Okinawa. As an
Osaka-based Korean activist, To has been involved with political activism
including helping anti-war American GIs to desert during the Vietnam War
and supporting the democratization movement in South Korea from Japan
(Arasaki et al. 2011). The founding members of OKPS came from different
backgrounds, but they came to know each other as they were members of
Hitotsubo Anti-war Land Owner’s Association. These individuals gathered to
establish OKPS with the aim of internationalizing Okinawa’s anti-base struggle, particularly by establishing links with South Korean anti-base activism.
Today, over thirty people are registered as members of OKPS but they are
widely dispersed. Many of them are residing in Okinawa Island, and some
of them are living in mainland Japan and South Korea. In a strict sense,
members are expected to pay 500 yen as a monthly membership fee to cover
costs of group activities. But because of the nature of the membership, it is
difficult to collect from all the members. Thus, in a practical sense, this rule
is applied loosely and irregularly. Also, as another principle, the members are
expected to attend a monthly meeting to discuss activity, policy and other administrative matters. However, this has never been made mandatory because
it is hardly ever possible to bring all the members together because of their
dispersed locations. Likewise, although OKPS has an annual assembly where
all the members are supposed to gather, in fact the annual assembly is usually organized as one of the regular monthly meetings. However, these loose
aspects of the membership and organizational structure do not mean that the
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Chapter Five
group is inactive. There are members who regularly attend the meetings every month from cities, towns and villages including Naha, Urazoe, Futenma,
and Yomitan. These people serve as core members in implementing various
group activities, corresponding with a widely dispersed network of individuals inside and outside Okinawa.
REMEMBERING THE OTHER WAR-DEAD
Although OKPS was founded in June 1998, its origins go back to the late
1980s. One of the crucial moments in this early period occurred when five
South Korean men visited Okinawa in November 1986. They were survivors
of a group of laborers who were forcibly taken to various places around
Okinawa from colonial Korea during World War II. According to a historical
study, about 350 Koreans, including the five men who visited Okinawa, were
mobilized to work around the Kerama Islands, located forty kilometers away
from the mainland of Okinawa in June 1944. They were part of a total of
some 15,000 Korean laborers who were collected to work in various places in
Okinawa towards the end of the Pacific War. Most of the Koreans in Kerama
Islands came from Gyeongsang County in North Gyeongsang Province. Arriving in Kerama, they were put to work building the secret shelters used to
keep small boats to be used for suicide attacks against the Allied Powers.
Conducted under the orders of the Japanese Imperial Army, this mission was
called marure. During the Battle of Okinawa, about 80 Korean laborers in
Kerama died, including some who were executed by the Japanese soldiers.
Struggling with hunger, they stole potatoes from the local farmland, but were
found by the local villagers and reported to the Japanese military officers.
In the end, 257 people survived and they were captured by the American
soldiers. After the war, they returned to Korea. These survivors had been
longing to take back the remains of their fellow Korean forced laborers to
their homeland. They established an organization called the Pacific Fellows
Association (Taiheiyō Dōshikai) together with other former Korean forced
laborers engaged in different parts of Japan during wartime (Arasaki 2004,
102–107). This is how the five Koreans came to visit Kerama Islands, particularly Aka-jima Island and Zamami-jima Island, in order to commemorate
the spirits of those who could never return to their homeland.
The visit of the five Korean survivors inspired not only Okinawans but
also some ethnic Koreans in Japan (so-called Zainichi Koreans). Among
them was an independent documentary maker, Park Sunam. She filmed the
Korean survivors’ journey to Kerama and made a film titled “Ariran no uta:
Okinawa kara no shōgen” (The Song of Arirang: Testimony from Okinawa)
Beyond Minority History
87
(1991). Born in Mie Prefecture as a second generation ethnic Korean resident in Japan, Park had started her career as a journalist and activist for her
fellow Zainichi Koreans since the early 1960s, most famously for her book
about the killing of two school girls in the so-called Komatsugawa Incidents
(Komatsugawa-jiken).2 Park produced a number of films related to Koreans
during wartime, including Koreans who became victims of the atomic bombs
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. With the help of her Okinawan friends
such as senior activist Fukuchi Hiroaki and photographer Ishikawa Mao, Park
embarked on her journey in the Kerama Islands at the time of the visit of the
five Korean former forced laborers.
The visit of the Korean survivors unveiled some crucial aspects of Okinawa’s wartime history. Although they had been mentioned in the work of
some local historians such as Miyazato Kiyogorō, the founder of the Kerama
Oceanic Culture Museum, the stories of Korean forced laborers in Kerama Islands were otherwise hardly remembered in Okinawa. Especially, memories
of the execution of Koreans were preserved by only a limited number of the
local residents. In this sense, unraveling the history of Koreans in Okinawa
during wartime introduced a new perspective to the history of the war in
Okinawa. But for locals, the forgotten history of the Korean forced laborers
posed difficult questions for Okinawa’s historical narratives. In particular, the
presence of Korean forced laborers complicated the view of Okinawan “victimhood” during the Battle of Okinawa and its historical position in modern
East Asia. While the exact number of Korean laborers, which includes young
Korean females who were forced to serve as so-called “comfort women,” is
not known, the memory of Koreans in wartime Okinawa made it necessary to
see local history from the perspective of “another victim” of the war.
In other words, the five Koreans’ visit raised the question of Okinawa’s
historical position in relation to East Asian neighbors who were formerly
Japanese colonies or occupied territories. Like other ethnic groups from the
territories of the former Japanese Empire, Okinawans were not considered
as equal to mainland Japanese. However, despite all the discriminatory
treatment, Okinawans were not the same as Koreans and Taiwanese. While
people in these places, which had more recently been incorporated into the
Japanese Empire, were categorized as people of “the external territories”
(gaichi), Okinawans were regarded as people from the internal region of
Japan proper (naichi). This was related to the political administration used to
govern the empire. While Koreans and Taiwanese were administered by the
governor generals who represented the authority of the Japanese government,
Okinawa was one of the Japanese prefectures. From this perspective, we can
understand the complexity of Okinawa’s modern experience, in that it was
not a colony but was treated in a discriminatory manner by some of those
from mainland Japan.
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Chapter Five
The re-appearance of Korean laborers in Okinawan history confronted
Okinawans with ambiguous problems of self-recognition as (on the one
hand) the victims of Japanese Imperial expansion who were incorporated into
modern nation-state and located in a peripheral position, and (on the other)
as people who were not the same as other colonized regional neighbors such
as Koreans. However, this was a crucial moment in the history of OKPS.
Some of the founding members such as Arasaki, Takahashi, and Tomiyama
were involved in the visit of the Korean war survivors. As the president of
Okinawa University, Arasaki contacted the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and arranged the issue of visas for the visit. Although official relations between South Korea and Japan were normalized in 1965, it was not
easy for Korean and Japanese tourists to visit each other’s country until the
Seoul Olympics were held in 1988. Takahashi and Tomiyama joined the film
crew and travelled in Aka, Tokashiki and Zamami Islands with director Park
Sunam.3
FROM OKINAWA TO ASIA
The Okinawan activists´ encounter with former Korean forced laborers was a
crucial moment. It was the first experience for them to see Koreans who survived the war in Okinawa and hear their memories. Also, the significance of
this period lies in the fact that this trip became the earliest occasion on which
some key members of OKPS met to work together. By joining the commemorative trip to Kerama, the founders of OKPS came to recognize another
colonial history in Okinawa, which also influenced local activists to consider
Okinawa’s historical present in relation to other Asian neighbors. But this
encounter with former Korean laborers was not the direct trigger to start the
international anti-base solidarity movement with South Koreans. Although it
was undoubtedly an important moment for Okinawan activists to understand
their colonial past in relation to Korea, Okinawans did not yet consider this
history in relation to their contemporary activism.
The international anti-base solidarity campaign started in Okinawa from
since the early 1990s. Okinawan activists, including Tomiyama Masahiro and
other founders of OKPS, wondered if it is possible to achieve by Okinawan
people only to win the struggle against the U.S. bases. Other local activists
too had similar concerns about the isolation of Okinawa’s anti-base movement. Knowing that there were other places where people took their anti-base
struggle to the world, these concerned Okinawans began to feel the necessity
to create an international solidarity campaign. One of the first countries they
contacted was the Philippines. One of the reasons was the Philippine democ-
Beyond Minority History
89
ratization movement, especially with its success in ending the long dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 (the so-called People Power
Revolution). There was another, more practical, reason. Tomiyama had a
friend, Arakaki Tokiko, who founded a citizens’ group called the Society for
Friendship of Okinawa and Philippines, which was started with the aim of
creating cultural exchange between the two places on the grassroots level.
So, through her introduction, Tomiyama first visited Manila in the late 1980s.
Following Tomiyama’s first visit, he and his fellow activists visited the
Philippines almost every year until the mid-1990s. Their main contact was
a progressive activism network called Bayan (the Bagong Alyasang Makabayan or the New Nationalist Alliance). As an umbrella organization joined
by many different leftist movement organizations, Bayan was founded in
1985 and conducted general strikes as a means of protest against Marcos’s
dictatorial regime. Together with communist and other progressive organizations in provincial areas, Bayan was a core force of the People Power Revolution in 1986 (Schock 2005, 146). The drastic change of the Philippine political landscape in the late 1980s was of strong interest to Okinawan activists.
Yet what attracted Okinawans most was the 1991 agreement for the transfer
of Clark Airbase from the U.S. Air Force to the Philippine government,
which was put into effect in the following year. Like Futenma and Kadena
Airbases in Okinawa, the Clark Airbase had also played an important role for
the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Therefore, the closure of this, one
of the largest U.S. airbases in the region, was perceived as a great achievement by the Philippine citizens. Therefore, when they heard the news, some
Okinawans thought that they should learn from this neighboring country, and
they started organizing a trip to the Philippines.
To strengthen Okinawa-Philippine solidarity, Tomiyama, Arasaki, Nishio
and some other activists organized a group to study the history and current
political and economic situation of the Philippines. The main aim of this
study group was to study how the Philippines had been able to remove the
American bases from the country. They also studied the relations between the
Philippines and Japan, including the history of the Japanese wartime occupation of the Philippines, and contemporary issues such as the local impact of
Japanese trade and investment (Ajia to Rentai suru Shūkai Jikkō Iinkai 1997,
1). In the meantime, Tomiyama visited the Philippines several times. After
Tomiyama’s visits over several years, the Okinawan side decided to organize
a symposium to learn about the Philippine experience of anti-base movement
activism. In this context, Nishio, Tomiyama, Takahashi, Arasaki and their
friend To Yusa started a group called the Action Committee for Solidarity
with Asia (ACSA or Ajia to Rentaisuru Shūkai Jikkō Iinkai) in 1994.
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However, the correspondence between Okinawa and the Philippines was
not consistent and did not last long after 1994. Like many grassroots activist
movements, ACSA faced problems such as insufficient membership, lack of
language skills to communicate with the Philippine activists, and funding to
support its activities. Those problems were overcome by volunteers and donations from the fellow activists. Also, even though the members of ACSA
had some problems of communication, the language was not the real problem. Nishio retrospectively said that the Philippine and Okinawan activists
were able to communicate adequately with each other, because the situations
in those two places were very similar.4 But one of the major reasons why this
early period of Okinawa’s solidarity ended in failure was (ironically) because
of the very fact of the closure of the U.S. bases in the Philippines. After withdrawal of the U.S. military from the Clark Airbase, American military bases
were no longer the major issue among the Philippine activists. After all, the
anti-base movement had not been the main reason for the establishment of
Bayan. The umbrella organization was created to tackle broad social and economic inequality in the country. American imperialistic involvement in the
Philippine politics and society, including its support for the Marcos regime,
was an important agenda issue during the democratization period. Insofar as
the American presence continued, the U.S. bases were a symbol that represented its influence in the Philippines. But after 1992, this symbol was not a
major issue any more for the local citizens.
FROM ACSA TO OKPS
The turning point for the activity of ACSA came rather coincidentally in late
1996 when an activist named Kim Yong-han visited from South Korea. He
was the leader of a group called the Headquarters of the National Campaign
for the Eradication of Crimes by U.S. Troops (Juhan Migun Beomjoe Geunjeor Undong Bonbu, or Jumibun in Korean). Established in 1993 after the
rape and murder of a young local woman by a U.S. soldier, “the Yun Geum-I
case” of October 1992, this group has been playing the leading role in the
anti-US military base movement in South Korea. The Yun Geum-I case was
a brutal murder case that triggered a nation-wide protest campaign, seeking
a fair criminal judgement against U.S. military and the revision of Status of
Forces Agreement between the U.S. and South Korean governments. Prior
to revision of the rules governing the criminal prosecution of U.S. military
personnel in 2001, the South Korean government did not have jurisdiction
over the U.S. servicemen who committed crimes in the country. Therefore,
South Korean activists such as Kim Yong-han were impressed by reading a
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report of the 1995 island-wide protest triggered by a rape case in Okinawa,
because this small provincial government in Japan became the greatest concern for both Tokyo and Washington. Looking at the political events triggered by Okinawa’s mass protest campaign, Korean activists considered that
they should learn from Okinawa’s experiences and local activism. Like Okinawans, activists from Jumibun also conducted a protest campaign against
sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel, and against the Status of Forces
Agreement with the U.S. In such an intense political environment, Kim arrived in Naha with the help of his fellow Korean activists in August 1996.
This first encounter with Kim Yong-han also brought great benefit for Okinawan activists. As Arasaki recalls, although declaration of the end of military government and the political democratization of South Korea since 1988
had been reported in Okinawa, the knowledge that Okinawan activists had
about Korean social activism was limited to media coverage, and thus the domestic situation of South Korean society was hardly visible to Okinawan activists (Arasaki et al. 2011, 7). In this sense, Kim’s visit to Okinawa was one
of the earliest opportunities for Okinawan activists to learn about the South
Korean anti-US base struggles, including the unequal status of the security
treaty with the U.S. which guaranteed the extraterritoriality of the local U.S.
soldiers and personnel. This first encounter prompted the creation of a new
channel of communication between activists from the two countries. Seven
months later, in February 1997, forty-three South Koreans visited Okinawa
to meet with Okinawan activists. One of the main reasons for the Koreans to
visit Okinawa was to observe the public hearing at Naha Regional Court of a
case between Hitotsubo Anti-war Landowners Association and the Japanese
government about the issue of forced leases of privately owned land to the
U.S. military. This was the crucial moment that enhanced mutual awareness
between South Korea and Okinawa.
After this second meeting, the interaction between Korea and Okinawa
became increasingly active. Even though both Koreans and Okinawans were
approaching each other without sufficient knowledge of the other, each side
was inspired by their counterparts. It was indeed an unprecedented event in
the histories of their respective anti-base movements that activists in two different regions came to meet with each other. Yet in a more pragmatic sense,
what made the activists connected was the fact that deployment of the U.S.
military bases was a common social and political problem across national
boundaries. In other words, through collaboration between Okinawa and Korea, activists in the two countries sought to reframe the anti-US base struggle
as a Northeast Asian regional problem. According to Tomiyama and Nishio,
activists in Okinawa felt that their struggle was not isolated any more when
they came to know that Koreans were also struggling with similar problems.5
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After hosting a meeting with the forty-three activists from Korea attended by
over two hundred people, the founding members of ACSA decided to dissolve and re-form the group. This is how people who founded ACSA decided
to start Okinawa Korea People’s Solidarity (whose formal name is: the Association that Aims to Create People’s Solidarity through Anti-US Military
Base Movement in Okinawa and South Korea, or Okikan or OKPS for short).
The group was established in June 1998.
Like ACSA, OKPS was based in Nishio’s Uruma Chapel. What the
members urgently needed to start collaborative works with Koreans was a
basic knowledge of Korean social movements. While some members such as
To, Takahashi, and Nishio had been individually involved with the Korean
democratization movement while they were in mainland Japan, their basic
knowledge of South Korean society was limited. With the help of Zainichi
Koreans such as Suh Sung, a Zainichi Korean activist who had been detained
in South Korea for nineteen years due to his political involvement with the
anti-authoritarian regime campaign, the OKPS members held social and
cultural events from late 1997 until early 2002 to inform people about the
base problems in South Korean politics. During this period, over twenty-five
visits took place between the two regions. The reasons for the trips were
diverse, including participation in academic conferences, and attendance at
demonstrations in both Okinawa and various places in South Korea. Through
the exchange of people, Okinawan activists and South Koreans learned about
each other. Also, from 1998, with the help of a Korean student studying at the
University of the Ryūkyūs, an evening Korean language class was opened.
Although people such as Takahashi and Tomiyama were working during
the daytime, at night they frequently went to study Korean. They could also
recruit new members for OKPS through the class. In addition to language
lessons, the members of OKPS held study groups. Initially they intended to
focus on the base problems. However, according to Tomiyama, the issues
that the members eventually needed to study covered a wide range of topics
other than the anti-base movement, such as historical and territorial problems
between Japan and South Korea (Arasaki et al. 2011, 10). Tomiyama also
states that OKPS succeeded in building a relationship of trust with Korean
activists over the course of the first five years as a result of their frequent
interaction across borders.
MUTUAL PRECONCEPTIONS
The visit of the Korean activists to Okinawa in 1997 was indeed the beginning of a process that opened a gateway for bilateral grassroots networks.
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However, there was also some ambivalence and skepticism in the feelings of
each side toward each other. For Korean activists, their ambivalent feelings
were primarily based on the history of Japanese colonialism in Korea. In the
mid-1990s, there were still a large number of Korean anti-US base activists
who thought that the presence of U.S. military bases in Japan prevented Japan
from rearming. They saw the U.S. forces as a “jar lid,” containing any possible resurgence of Japanese militarism. From this perspective, many Korean
activists were skeptical about the aims and philosophy of the Okinawan antiUS military base movement. Furthermore, there was a widespread perception
in Korean society that U.S. military bases helped South Koreans protect their
country from the North Korean threat. Takahashi recalls that many South Korean journalists were interested in asking Okinawan activists why they were
opposing the U.S. military bases (Arasaki et al. 2011, 14–15).
At the same time, Okinawans were worried about developing a solidarity
movement with South Korean activists. Although military dictatorship had
formally come to an end when President Roh Tae-woo, a former general
of the South Korean Army, declared the democratization of South Korea in
1987, Okinawan activists were still concerned about surviving elements from
the former military regime, best represented by the issue of the National Security Act. As a second generation Zainichi Korean who also had a long-term
involvement with the democratization movement of South Korea in Japan
during the 1970s and 1980s, To Yusa knew only too well that many of his
fellow Zainichi Korean activists from Japan were imprisoned in Korea under
the National Security Act. Tomiyama says that he and fellow Okinawan activists in the 1970s and 1980s had a preconception that there was no freedom
of speech and no social activism in South Korea under dictatorship (Arasaki
et al. 2011, 10–14).
Hesitation to deepen the solidarity movement with Koreans was not only
derived from the image of the South Korean military regime shared by the
members but also from personal experiences. Some members had visited
South Korea before 1987, where they had witnessed South Korean everyday
life which was quite different from life in Japan at that time. Some of them
were deeply shocked by their experiences in Korea, and had stopped their
involvement with activism related to Korea until the late 1990s. Among
them was Nishio Ichirō. Nishio, who was studying at a theological school in
Okayama called Nōson Dendō Shingakkō (the Okayama Theological Seminary for Rural Mission), flew to South Korea with his Korean friend in early
August 1974. Although this visit was part of their religious training at a rural
chapel in Seoul, he was also involved with left-wing student activism at his
previous theological college, Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (Tokyo
Shingaku Daigaku). Because of this political background, Nishio was anxious
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about his first visit to South Korea. On his arrival he was greeted by the
sight of Korean soldiers with machine guns at Seoul’s Gimpo International
Airport. His anxiety reached its peak when he was about to leave South Korea in mid-August. At the immigration desk of Gimpo Airport, the officers
confiscated his passport. Knowing little about his situation or the local language, Nishio was in a panic and only recalled what he was told by his friend:
“Never lose your passport.” Later he found out that this was because of the
assassination of Yuk Young-soo, the wife of the President Park Chung-hee,
by a young Korean resident in Japan, Moon Se-gwang. When this so-called
“Moon Se-gwang Incident” occurred, South Korean police suspected that the
perpetrator was Japanese. Therefore, all the Japanese who planned to leave
the country around this period were blocked from departing. The only exception was fishermen.6
FACE-TO-FACE RELATIONSHIP
In the course of building trust with South Korean activists, the members of
OKPS have kept one principle as the motto of their activity. That is to create
and prioritize “face-to-face relationships” (kao no mieru kankei) with South
Korean counterparts. The former representative of OKPS, Nishio Ichirō,
said that, when he and his friends launched OKPS, they decided to build up
a close relationship with South Koreans to the point at which they would be
able to see their Korean counterparts as friends.7 Firstly, this meant an actual
exchange of people between the two areas. As we have seen, the relationship between the two different groups of social actors started with suspicion
and unfamiliarity toward each other. With such a beginning, the best way in
which the members of OKPS could break the ice with South Korean activists
was to establish a regular cycle of movement of people. During the first few
years, the members of OKPS frequently flew to Korea and also invited Korean anti-US base activists to visit Okinawa. Through the members’ participation in events such as study groups, symposiums, academic conferences,
study tours and actual anti-base struggles, Okinawans increasingly learned
about South Korean anti-base struggles from firsthand experience.
Secondly, the principle of face-to-face relationships also implies a type
of solidarity based on interpersonal relationship rather than organizational
connectivity. This approach enabled Okinawan activists to create flexible
and wide-ranging individual relationships in many different kinds of anti-US
base activist groups in South Korea. Although this group’s first encounter
with the Korean anti-base movement was through Kim Yong-han and Jumibun, the members of OKPS were involved with anti-US base campaigns in
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other places including Mae Hyang Ri, where local villagers and supporting
activists demanded the closure of a military base used as a target practice site
including depleted uranium shells, and also with a protest campaign against
the extension of the military training facility in Pyeongtaek. In recent years,
some members of OKPS began to be involved with the anti-naval base construction movement in places like Gangjeon, Jeju Island. Their relationships
with Korean activists have been growing through these shared experiences.8
“LET’S LEARN FROM OKINAWA/KOREA”
Despite their initial unfamiliarity with ways in which to approach their South
Korean counterparts, OKPS and their Korean counterparts have created mutual trust. This was achieved in part through frequent communication that ensured Okinawans understood people’s lived experiences and knowledge born
out of the social contexts in South Korea. Through meetings at conference
venues, at protest sites being exposed to freezing water from the water cannon
of riot police in Pyeongtaek’s cold winter, and at downtown bars where they
drink together, OKPS has become the first Japanese anti-base group which
could successfully build a solidarity movement with Koreans over the issue
of the U.S. military bases. Inspired by OKPS, civic groups in other areas of
Japan with U.S. bases, such as Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture, began to
follow OKPS in creating collaborative projects with Koreans.
Meanwhile, the Korean activists also found Okinawa to be an important
“reference point” for the anti-base movement. Here, the notion of “reference
point” means that the Koreans not only refer to their counterparts but also
introduce ideas and strategies from Okinawa’s anti-base movement into their
local activism. The anti-base struggle is indeed a translocal movement in
which Okinawan and Korean participants are connected through people and
ideas across different local contexts. In this sense, the forty-three Koreans’
visit to Okinawa in 1997 was profoundly important in that it was the one
of the earliest moments in which Korean activists learned Okinawan ways
of conducting anti-base campaigns. Through this event, Korean activists
learned the strategy developed by the Hitotsubo Anti-War Landlords. This
strategy was introduced to the struggle in Korea. By purchasing a portion of
privately owned land collectively, Korean citizens in Maehyang-ri started to
initiate their local version of anti-war landowners from the late 1990s. Bringing a court case against the Korean government over the noise from the U.S.
bases is also another strategy that was introduced from Okinawa. Following
examples from places such as Kadena and Futenma, where local citizens
organize groups to take legal action against noise pollution (bakuon soshō
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dan), Korean activists in places such as Pyeongtaek sued their government
over similar problems.
However, it needs to be noted that “learning from Okinawa” is not a onesided approach. OKPS was started to create a bilateral relationship through
which mutual learning between Okinawans and their counterparts overseas
could be developed. In this sense, while Korean activists say that they should
learn from Okinawa, Okinawans also learn from Korean experiences. With
regard to this point, Arasaki’s comment on Korean activism is helpful. Looking at the surge of Korean nationwide protest against the U.S. military over
an accident in which two local schoolgirls were killed by an American tank
in 2002, Arasaki said:
When I was studying South Korean base problems, I saw a pamphlet which
says “let’s learn from Okinawa” but I thought this was an overestimation. The
point (of the pamphlet) was “Okinawa made the U.S. apologize, but the U.S.
have never apologized to us (South Korea)”. . . Although they (South Koreans)
are saying that they should learn from Okinawa, I am doubtful about the current
situation of the Okinawan anti-base movement. I rather think that Okinawans
are encouraged by Koreans. . . . I keenly feel the importance of considering how
we can learn from them. (Arasaki et al. 2011, 13)
In particular, Arasaki thinks that the active participation of young people in
the anti-base movement is a characteristic that Okinawa needs to learn from
South Korea. From a different perspective, Tomiyama says that he is always
amazed by the number of people which South Korean activism mobilizes and
by their creative strategy for the anti-base campaigns in Seoul. He said:
South Korean activism is always sensational and exciting. When I was marching
with other fellow activists in front of Seoul Mayoral Building, people suddenly
spread a big American flag. It was a massive flag. You know what happened?
A few young guys ran in the middle of the crowd to cut the flag into two. I was
thrilled. I wished we could also do that performance in Okinawa.9
Perhaps one of the most crucial things that Okinawa learned through interaction with the Korean anti-base movement was the significance of Okinawa’s
geopolitical location in the region. Kadena Airbase in Okinawa was one of
the main sites from which American B-29 bombers were sent to the Korean Peninsula during the Korean War. After half a century, while the U.S.
military command has changed globally since 2001, reflecting 9/11 and the
subsequent attack on Afghanistan, Okinawa is still regarded as a crucial place
for America’s regional strategy in the Asia-Pacific, especially in relation to
Northeast Asian affairs. Although this fact has been widely known among
local activists in Okinawa, the actual strategic connection between Okinawa
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and Korea was not known until OKPS learned about this through colleagues
in South Korea. As To Yusa says, since the Korean War, the headquarters
of U.S. Forces Korea, located in Yongsan near Seoul, has been a center for
U.S. military operations in the Northeast Asian region including Okinawa.
He also says that when the commander of the U.S. Eighth Army is changed,
it has been conventional that the newly appointed officer is always taken on
a tour of inspection of the bases in not only Korea but also Japan, including
the places such as Futenma and Kadena in Okinawa and Atsugi, Yokosuka,
Hokkaido and Yamaguchi (Arasaki et al. 2011, 18).
This intra-regional connectivity within Asia also raises ethical questions
for the Okinawan anti-base movement. Tomiyama recalled that when Okinawan activists succeeded in stopping the import of America’s depleted
uranium bombs in 1997, they did not even imagine that those bombs would
instead be relocated to a base in South Korea. He said that until he learned
about these events in Korea he did not consider the impact of this “success,”
from the Okinawan perspective, which in fact just shifted the burden to their
regional neighbors.10 For the members of OKPS, acquiring this sort of knowledge through interaction with Korean activists helped Okinawans reconsider
the meanings of their activism in relation to other places in the region.
Five years of constant interaction with South Korean activists from 1998
until 2002 have brought slight changes to the Okinawan anti-base movement. Compared to the early days, visits of Korean activists to Okinawa are
no longer unusual, and have instead become important annual events for
Okinawans. Although their activities are still not very well-known, growing
interest in the Okinawan anti-base movement amongst Korean activists and
an increase in the number of visitors show that the activities that OKPS has
organized for the last two decades have had some impact. This has encouraged further collaboration between Okinawans and Koreans in fields such as
the environmental movement. Citizens from Okinawa and Korea started undertaking a collaborative survey of land contamination on the sites of former
U.S. military camps from the mid-2000s. This was a positive progress of the
transnational solidarity movement.
OKIKAN STYLE: “5.15” AND THE
EMERGENCE OF THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS
15 May is an important day for Okinawa’s post-World War history. Every year, there are prefecture-wide ceremonies and events that take place
around this date, which marks the anniversary of the day when Okinawa
was “returned” to Japan in 1972. When “Go Ichi Go” (15 May in Japanese)
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is approaching, there have always been public events around Okinawa. One
of the main ceremonies is usually organized by the Okinawa prefectural
government. The governor of Okinawa and high-profile political figures
come to give speeches to celebrate this historical day. However, anti-base
activists and scholars also organize events with quite different motivations.
Organizing public fora such as symposia, panel discussions and lectures, they
question what “reversion” actually meant for Okinawa and its people. Also,
during the week, there has been a tradition of making a human chain that surrounds the U.S. Futenma Airbase.
In 2012, this historic day was to have its fortieth anniversary. For this
memorable year, both the prefectural government and civic groups had been
working to organize events on a greater scale than previous years. There were
numerous posters and flyers displayed at corners of streets and on billboards.
In this environment of excitement, the members of OKPS had also been
working on their events. Ever since 2003, OKPS have been inviting Koreans
to participate in the series of events around 15 May. With guests from diverse organizations, they have organized public events in different places in
Okinawa. Also, the members of OKPS become tour guides, and take Korean
visitors to Henoko and Takae to show them the ongoing protest campaigns.
The members of OKPS usually start working on this project from the previous year. For the events of May 2012, they started planning the Koreans’
visit from late September 2011. The agenda items for the monthly regular
meeting, which are not so numerous at other times of the year, gradually increase as the anniversary approaches. With senior figures such as Takahashi
and Nishio as coordinators, the members discuss issues related to this weeklong event. The agenda is extensive. Jobs such as booking accommodation,
organizing a pick-up service for Korean guests from the airport, interpretation
at formal and informal venues, stage setting, and preparation of lunches are
all conducted by OKPS.
In addition to the tour-guide role, OKPS has been working on a musical
event. Since 2009, OKPS has invited cultural performance groups such as
Deoneum and Kkottaji. Deoneum performs traditional farmers’ music called
pungmur nori. Playing the drums and dancing in a circle, the performers not
only showcase classic folk culture but also express protests against the political establishment. Based in Incheon, one of the centers of South Korean
industrialization, they have been collaborating closely with industrial workers. The group Kkottachi is also known for its use of music performance as
a means of social protest. While Tŏnŭm plays traditional music, Kkottachi
sings in a contemporary pop music style. In Okinawa as in Korea, music
plays a crucial role in the culture of the peace movement including the antibase movement. Indie artists such as rappers Kakumakushaka and Chibana
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Tatsumi are among the singers whose works have been popular in Okinawa,
particularly among youths. OKPS approached several local musicians, and
was able to book an Okinawan traditional music singer, Ayumu Yonaha, for
the coming event.
The annual music event for 15 May had been organized by new members
of OKPS rather than the senior founding members. People in their thirties
or forties were particularly active. Among them is Ishikawa Takashi, who
proposed the idea of inviting Kkottachi. Originally born and raised in Chiba
Prefecture, Ishikawa used to work in Tokyo as a medical doctor, particularly
for manual laborers. He moved to Okinawa in the early 2000s at the invitation of a senior pulmonologist in Naha. While working in the local Daidō
Hospital, Ishikawa has been involved with OKPS ever since he arrived. He is
one of the main contributors to OKPS in terms of financial assistance. Yet his
career as an activist started when he was a university student. When he was
a medical student in Chiba University, Ishikawa started becoming involved
with social activism to support workers affected by industrial accidents, particularly those suffering from respiratory disease. During that period, he met
concerned medical students in South Korea who also worked for the laborers.
It was then that Ishikawa was introduced to Kkottachi, and OKPS was able
to invite the group because of his connections. Participation of the young
generations is not only helpful for the seniors but is also playing a vital role
in introducing new kinds of activities to OKPS. The young participants do not
necessarily share the contexts and experiences of their elders. But OKPS has
gradually become better known among local activists and other local citizens
through cultural events such as music concerts during the events of 15 May,
which embodies the distinctive cross-border reach of this group. In this sense,
the spirit of OKPS is developed not only by its senior members but also by
the younger members who are creating new styles of collaboration between
Okinawa and South Korea.
CONCLUSION
This chapter examines the process by which one group of Okinawan anti-base
activists gained a regional perspective on the meaning of their local activism.
The project of building a transnational network was initiated by five local
activists who felt a common imperative to seek new ways to develop Okinawan anti-base activism. But the founders of OKPS were not only motivated
by anti-base politics. By reflecting upon the historical relationships between
Okinawa and South Korea, they questioned the dominant historical narrative of Okinawa’s victimhood at the hands of Japanese imperialism. In other
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words, the OKPS was founded by the local citizens who realized the necessity
of reconsidering their local histories by including regional neighbors whose
colonial past and experiences were hardly remembered in the popular accounts of Okinawa’s modern history. In this sense, it is important to highlight
the significance of historical consciousness with regard to Okinawa’s postwar
(or, arguably Okinawa’s postcolonial) conditions that motivated people to
start the transnational solidarity movement.
While based on such historical awareness, the actual transnational cooperation became possible through a series of relatively fortuitous events in the
late 1990s. Although the group was founded by concerned local Okinawan
citizens in the mid-1990s, its existence would not have been possible without
the visit of Korean activists who became interested in Okinawa’s mass protest campaign in 1995. After the failure of their first attempt at transnational
cooperation with Philippine activists, Okinawan activists faced difficulties
in starting a new international solidarity movement. In such circumstances,
the first visit of a Korean activist in 1996 and the following visit by fortythree Koreans to learn about the Okinawan anti-base struggle gave hope for
Okinawans to restart their project. Thus the transnational anti-base movement
between Okinawa and South Korea was made possible by a coming together
of people who similarly sought new visions to develop their struggles in two
different locations.
The effort that OKPS has made to develop relationships with South Korean activists over the last twenty years has created solidarity based on trust
between different activist groups across national borders. Through exchanges
of people, ideas and experiences, they could establish a type of mutual reference system by which the activists in different locales could compare and
learn about the anti-base movement in two different locales. At the same
time, this solidarity movement also generated a regional perspective in which
Okinawan and Korean activists could reflect upon the impact and the meanings of their local activism on their counterparts. For OKPS, this means that
the notion of region has widened the scope of their activism by extending it in
relation to regional neighbors. In this sense, one of the significant outcomes
that OKPS has brought to the Okinawan anti-base movement is the idea of
East Asia through which the local anti-base activists reflexively consider the
continuity of American hegemony as a regional issue, which enabled them
to think of the implications of their activism beyond the local confinement.
NOTES
1. Hitotsubo is a size of land which is equivalent to 3.3 square meters. The main
activity of this society is to purchase the land from the original landlords who have
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their property within the U.S. military bases. In doing so, the activists refuse to rent
their land to the Japanese Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for offering the
land to the local U.S. military, and engage in a court battle with Japanese authority
over the land. The participants of this project are widely spread all over Japan, in
places such as in Tokyo and Osaka as well as in Okinawa.
2. This was the rape and murder of two Japanese schoolgirls by a young male
zainichi Korean. Park exchanged a number of letters with this man, who was sentenced to capital punishment, and she edited a book based on those letters titled:
“Tsumi to Ai to Shi to” (Guilt, Love and Death) in 1963. Some intellectuals such as
Suzuki Michihiko publicly criticized the capital punishment imposed on Lee. For
example, see Suzuki 2007.
3. Interview with Takahashi Toshio, March 26, 2012.
4. Interview with Nishio Ichirō, November 23, 2011.
5. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
6. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
7. Interview with Nishio Ichirō and Tomiyama Masahiro, November 23, 2011.
8. Interview with Tomiyama Masahiro, November 21, 2011.
9. Interview with Masahiro Tomiyama, December 14, 2011.
10. Interview with Tomiyama Masahiro, November 21, 2011.
Chapter Six
Fault Lines of Occupation,
Limits of Hybridity
Race, Class and Transnationalism
in Okinawa and Japan
Ayako Takamori
Ainoko, konketsuji, Amerasian, amerajian, mixed-blood, kokusaijin, haafu,
half, shima-haafu, amerika-kei uchinaanchu, hapa, double, daboru, biracial,
multiracial, multiethnic, mixed-race, mikkusu, mikkusuruutsu, mixed.1 Each
of these terms is an effort within the process of racialization—whether to denigrate or to celebrate—to name a category that resists categorization. Their
inadequacies point to both the impossibility and the imperative of this task.
Over-saturated with history, each of these terms also carries an affective force
felt keenly by those it seeks to name. While names have the power to exclude
and essentialize, they also enable spaces of belonging and recognition. In
Okinawa, as well as in Japan more broadly, debates about the appropriateness
of terms often revolve around their representational accuracy or whether or
not they are considered derogatory; however, all names ultimately fail. I view
the discourse and debates about the names themselves as an implicit critique
of racialized ideologies that are persistently naturalized within nationalist and
multiculturalist logics alike.
In what follows, I focus on the tensions that arise in identifying (and being
identified) as mixed-race, both in the context of Okinawa in particular and in
Japan more broadly. As a cultural anthropologist, I am especially interested
in the slippages between identity categories and lived experiences. Therein lie
ideology and power. These gaps constitute significant sites for understanding
the ramifications of racial politics in Okinawa, where systems of power and
inequality collide and overlap in specific configurations. They highlight the
dialogic production, and friction (Tsing 2005), of racial discourses in Okinawa
produced at the nexus of local, national, and transnational processes. In this
sense, this chapter is a meditation on the challenges of transnational alliances
and the ruse of identity categories that attempt to transcend these challenges,
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even as one must acknowledge the political exigencies of strategic essentialism (Spivak 1987). I will begin by situating “mixed race” within discourses
of multiculturalism in Japan. The following section will then examine representations of mixed-race people in Japanese popular media before we turn our
focus on Okinawa and the ways in which being mixed race in Okinawa are
distinct in significant ways from—while still linked to—the broader context
of mixed-race politics in Japan and beyond. Building on the growing body of
work in critical mixed race studies and drawing on ethnographic fieldwork
research conducted between 2011–2013, I critically examine and complicate
the idea of mixed race in Okinawa in order to extend how we theorize cultural
activism and transpacific circuits of diasporic and transnational imaginings.
Further, I call for more attention to the ways in which mixed race identities
are imagined in terms of hybridity; discourses of mixed race identities often
play into a simplistic and reductive form of multiculturalism that domesticates otherness and necessarily reifies culture through processes of commensuration, as Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) has argued.
DISCOURSES OF MULTICULTURALISM
Mixed-race identities are centrally situated within shifting ideologies of multiculturalism and diversity in Japan.2 The last couple of decades have seen
a florescence of interest and scholarship among anthropologists, political
scientists, and scholars in other fields exploring the status of multiculturalism
in Japan. Specific language may vary, whether addressing issues of diversity, internationalization [kokusaika], or multicultural coexistence [tabunka
kyosei], and the concepts themselves often remain vague and poorly defined.
Nonetheless, this research falls within a broadly shared interest to critically
interrogate constructions of Japanese national identity. Collectively, these
works attempt to: 1) counter dominant and essentialist representations of
Japan being a homogeneous nation state by highlighting various forms of
diversity and unevenness within Japan, spanning premodern to contemporary
forms, and 2) understand the systematic ways in which minoritized communities in Japan have been discriminated against, rendered invisible, or otherwise
marginalized.3
Some, such as John Lie (2001), were influential in highlighting the history and experiences of minoritized groups in Japan, dispelling the myth of a
monoethnic Japan, a product of postwar ideology. He has argued that Japan
is not multicultural, but multi-ethnic. Others have shown how global flows
have long influenced cultural forms, complicating notions of authenticity
(see, for example, Condry 2006, Sterling 2010). Still others have examined
how political histories and ideologies of blood and race helped construct the
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105
modern nation-state along with its colonial others and minoritized populations (Fujitani 2011, Robertson 2002, 2012, Ryang 2000, Weiner 1994).
Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2010) has looked at how the borders of nations (and
laws which shape and enforce them) are not self-evident but co-constituted
by broader geopolitical contexts. Globalization and transnationalism in Japan
produced new and changing kinds of identifications and habitus among those
such as “third culture kids” and kikoshijo [returnee children and youth who
lived some years abroad] (Goodman 2003, Kanno 2000) whose relative economic privilege and global mobilities are often also the very source of their
marginalization. Taken together, this substantial body of research has effectively worked to show that Japan is not, and never was, homogeneous. For
those living in Okinawa, where Okinawans’ sense belonging and place within
the nation-state of Japan is fraught, this scholarship is especially salient, but
also painfully obvious.
The focus within these discussions has turned more recently to “international marriages” (for example, Faier 2009 and Kudoˉ 2014), driven by challenges posed in integrating and creating communities of belonging for new
immigrant spouses, the educational system, bullying, cultural identification,
citizenship, and transnational kinship ties. While the first wave of literature
and research in Japan on mixed race identity arose in response to the plight
of abandoned “Amerasian” children in the aftermath of defeat in World War
II and postwar occupation, this more recent direction in scholarship takes
the idea of a multiethnic Japan to the next logical step. It examines not only
diversity and minorities within Japan, but also how the long-term presence of
minorities and immigrants produce a more hybrid and shifting definition of
Japaneseness itself. It reflects an interest in effecting social change in Japan,
and the emergence of hybrid new identifications that complicate how the nation has been imagined. While Japanese youth are unprecedentedly diverse
and multiracial, forms of discrimination and racism are far from obsolete. The
self-image of Japanese homogeneity serves still to justify restrictive immigration policies, lack of legal anti-discrimination protections, and assimilationist
perspectives. However, as Japan’s demographics change, issues around inclusion—legal and cultural—become increasingly pressing, requiring a shift in
assumptions of who “counts” as Japanese. These questions (and, therefore,
the answers produced) nonetheless assume the stability of Japaneseness by
focusing on mainland Japan. If one decenters these questions about diversity
and unevenness in Japan to look at Okinawa, one would readily see that
Okinawans live the question of “Japaneseness” in ways that destabilize its
normative construction.
Despite the increasing attention to diversity and minority experiences in
Japan and grassroots efforts to address specific needs of communities at
the local levels, one can be skeptical that this shift necessarily represents a
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fundamental turn toward a more tolerant and accepting society. Given decades of economic stagnation and pessimism about Japan’s future alongside
increased visibility of cultural and ethnic diversity in Japan, the positive
revaluation of mixed race children and youth may be linked to the ways in
which they index—real or imagined—a forward looking optimism about
Japan. That is, their visibility speaks to aspirations for Japan to be a more
cosmopolitan nation with an economically robust future, tied to neoliberalism
and global capital. The valence is akin to rhetoric found in the promotion of
“Cool Japan” by government and business sectors hoping to harness Japan’s
so-called soft power in the global marketplace (McGray 2002). In this sense,
mixed-race celebrities embody a kind of Japanese hybrid “coolness,” evidence of Japan’s successful engagement in transnational capitalist flows. This
projection of a more globally integrated Japan is, however, cast in terms of
highly stratified global racial schemas and colorism where certain forms of
hybridity and mixed-race identities are more desirable and celebrated more
than others. When one speaks of haafu children, the default assumption is that
the haafu children are “half” white. In Japan, it is not uncommon for whiteness (and its fetishization) to stand in for westernness and foreignness, much
to the disappointment of many Asian Americans in Japan who might not receive the same reception from Japanese as their white American colleagues.
And, as Laurel Kamada (2010) found in her research on mixed-race adolescent girls in Japan, the girls in her study strategically draw on these positively
valued associations of mixed-race identity with transnational cultural capital
and the West in order to negotiate their position in school and manage being
regarded as foreign by classmates and teachers. However, these are strategic
resources available only to certain mixed youth.
HAAFU IN MEDIA
The recent growth of Japanese mixed-race studies follows the more widespread fascination with mixed-race bodies in mainstream consumer culture
and Japanese mediascapes. Actors, comedians, models and musicians who
are mixed—or haafu, from the English loanword, “half”—have gained some
prominence, raising visibility and awareness, however superficially, about
mixed-race experiences in Japan. Even recent beauty trends have picked up
on the popularity of haafu models, resulting in a proliferation of make-up tips
in magazines and online video tutorials as well as plastic surgery menus that
offer to help women achieve the haafu (generally white) look. It is unclear
at first glance whether these trends are symptomatic of internalized antiAsian racism or constitute a part of popular cultural practices in Japan that
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play radically with the plasticities of the body and in identities (for example,
cosplay, monomane). However, being told one looks haafu in this context is
considered a compliment, where haafu women are frequently described as
being especially kawaii or “cute.”
Haafu attributes or features can be a form of desirable otherness and fetishization that simultaneously functions as a reassertion of non-belonging
and exclusion. Recent media attention seems to offer relatively positive
representations of mixed-race Japanese; however, television shows and the
crafting of celebrities such as Jero, a black enka singer from Pittsburgh whose
grandmother was Japanese, often draw on the structural elements of humor
that upend expectations in order to elicit surprise and pleasure in audiences.
These expectations (and being able to upend these expectations) are premised
on maintaining a rigid and racialized self/other dichotomy in how “Japaneseness” is defined. They reproduce delineations of Otherness by exploiting the
play on the pleasure of transgressing these boundaries with the Other in ways
that reaffirm those boundaries. The source of the humor is in the cognitive
dissonance and surprise of (for example) hearing fluent Japanese spoken by
a person one assumes to be foreign. Some older mixed Okinawans expressed
frustration at the willingness of some Okinawan haafu talent to perform caricatures of their identities for comedic effect. In making light of (or worse,
completely erasing) haafu experiences for the sake of mainstream humor felt
insulting and grating, serving to counter their years of work and activism to
assert their belonging. Screens in media function as an actual screen or shield
from the audience, such that transgressions and difference are rendered safe
and kept at arm’s length from the viewer’s everyday lives. One young Japanese Tokyoite in her mid-20s spoke to me of her fear of black people, and
how this fear of encountering them in real life is one of the reasons she did
not want to travel to the U.S. Yet she enjoys performers such as Jero, admires
haafu models, and avidly consumes globally circulated black expressive cultural forms and influences in Japanese popular culture.
Mary Douglas (1966) argues that bodily taboos and rituals dealing with
dirt and pollution come to represent the borders of culture and community
itself. That is, coherence and maintaining order in society is enacted through
the boundaries of the body by managing that which is deemed dirty or is uncategorizable and ambiguous. Thus, the points of permeability are also points
of vulnerability and danger, but also of the power to shift and transform the
boundaries themselves. The mixed race body in this sense is a manifestation
of social flux and a “failure” to maintain a given social order and the “purity”
of the nation constructed on the premise of racial and cultural homogeneity.
It is not uncommon in conversations in Japanese about mixed-race identities
for speakers to use phrases such as “jun nihonjin” [pure Japanese] to refer to
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themselves or others in contrast to those who are “haafu” or children of immigrants. This choice in language is common regardless of whether speakers
feel positively about mixed race individuals.
With the relatively newfound popularity of being mixed, some caution
against over-idealizing or exoticizing mixed identities. Akira Uchimura
Moraga, a Japanese Chilean, is himself an occasional television personality in
Japanese media and a cultural activist. In writing about haafu discourse and
being haafu in Japan, he argues the following:
I seem to see many more mixed people like me here in Japan. I think this is
a good thing but at the same time, I am a little worried because I see many
“Hafus” (Half Japanese as we are called in Japan) feel that being Hafu is being
superior because now suddenly we are popular on TV, music videos, magazines
and in movies. I just feel that being mixed is great since you can understand
different cultures and embrace more easily different views on life, but it is not a
supernatural thing. (Hapa Voice last accessed July 7, 2016)
When I first met Akira, he was living in Japan as a kind of ambassador for
global nikkeijin youth and a public advocate for a more inclusive and multicultural Japanese civil society. As was the case with many individuals with
whom I spoke, he is attempting to normalize haafu identities in an environment in which haafu is still entrenched as an Other, and therefore not fully
Japanese. Akira’s claim that being mixed-race allows one to understand different cultural perspectives and multiple worldviews is echoed among those
promoting the term “double” [daboru] as an alternative to “half” [haafu].
While “haafu” is currently the most common term used, it invokes the racialized language of blood quanta. Critics argue that “half” is diminishing of
mixed identities because it implies an individual is culturally incomplete and
partial. As I will discuss again later in the context of Okinawa, the privilege
of access to multiple worldviews and cultural spheres is not always possible
for everyone: it is not inherent to the condition of being mixed-race and
presumes the normativity and stability of the heterosexual nuclear family
structure. There are some who grew up without a relationship to one or either
biological parents, and therefore were cut off from other cultural worlds and
from avenues of transnational identification. This access and cultural mobility provides significant cultural capital to those who are identified as mixed,
both in Okinawa and in Japan more broadly. But this access is uneven at best.
Popular images of mixed race identities notwithstanding, stigma and xenophobia are far from obsolete. Attempts to celebrate hybridity and diversity
often fail to address the kinds systemic racism and exclusion that shape, and
continues to shape, the lived experiences of many mixed children. Often,
media representations elicit backlash and hate speech, especially on online
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109
platforms where the netto-uyoku [right-wing nationalists on the internet]
thrive. These attacks also frequently play into gender and sexual politics.
Beauty pageants are never simply about beauty and femininity (Kurashige
2002, Siu 2005, Wilk 1993). They are where meanings around ethnic,
national, diasporic, and international identities are heavily contested and
negotiated through an idealization of women’s bodies and performances, as
illustrated in the 2015 media coverage of Ariana Miyamoto, the first haafu
woman, and notably also the first black Japanese woman, to be crowned
Miss Universe Japan. The event made the international news circuit. Miyamoto is viewed as breaking new ground and representing the new face of
contemporary Japan, opening opportunities subsequently for those such as
Priyanka Yoshikawa, an Indian Japanese woman, to be crowned Miss World
Japan in 2016. At the same time, the successes of Miyamoto and Yoshikawa
have sparked vehement anti-black and nationalist rhetoric among right wing
netizens. While many heralded this as a step in the right direction for Japan,
others felt these women are not “Japanese” enough to represent Japan. The
intensity of reactions were not dissimilar to those in the U.S. who, in 2014,
objected to Nina Davuluri, the first Asian American to be crowned Miss
USA. Although American national identity is built on the mythos of being a
melting pot of immigrants, Asian Americanness is still marked as “foreign”
in the U.S. much the same way that blackness is still marked as “other” in
Japan. In interviews, Ariana Miyamoto is repeatedly asked to justify her ability to represent Japan; she is compelled to insist on (and perform) her “real”
Japaneseness in ways that other contestants do not. Yet she has embraced
this role and used her platform effectively to discuss experiences that mixed
individuals face in Japan and assert their belonging in Japan. She maintains
in an interview with the BBC that the term haafu is necessary as a way for
her identity to be legible in Japan: “If it was not for the word hafu, it would
be very hard to describe who I am. . . . It sounds strange, but for us mixed
kids, we need this word hafu” (Wingfield-Hayes 2015). It is notable that both
Miyamoto and Yoshikawa represent a validation of mixed race identities that
decenter whiteness.
Gender ideologies are inextricably linked to the politics of mixed identities in Japan in other ways as well. While I was doing fieldwork research
between 2011 and 2013 in Tokyo and in Okinawa, I encountered a persistent
urban legend, whispered to me by a few individuals who inquired about my
fieldwork: There are many young, predatory women, I was told, who go out
to bars and clubs popular with foreigners in order to “hook up” with nonJapanese partners, with no interest in dating or relationships. Many are now
specifically pursuing not just white men, but also black men, with the sole,
desperate aim of getting pregnant and being able to have a cute mixed-race
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baby of their own. Usually, the story is recounted in a scandalized and critical
tone. One man concluded this with the rhetorical question: “Can you believe
there are Japanese women like this?” They viewed such women as an embarrassment to the nation. The prevalence of these narratives may or may not
accurately reflect a reality or an actual behavioral trend. However, they are
revealing of the storyteller’s anxieties—some of which may be historically
rooted—not just regarding foreignness and miscegenation, but also about
Japanese masculinity and the control of women’s bodies and sexuality. One
of the major economic and policy concerns of the Japanese government is the
rapidly declining birthrate, in which young women are often blamed for being
too selfish, frivolous, and consumer-driven to marry and reproduce. In these
stories, women’s sexual or romantic desires are sublimated into the fetishization of the mixed-race baby as the ultimate consumer trend, and are therefore
distracted from their “proper” roles of marriage and family.
Implicitly reproduced in these stories is the notion that a rejection of patriarchal and patrilineal family structures is a symptom of disorder in women
and an aberrant value system. These kinds of urban legends and cautionary
tales may be a more contemporary iteration of the sensationalized figure of
the “yellow cab” from the 1990s, a derogatory media term used to describe
young Japanese women in search of sexual adventures and relationships with
non-Japanese—especially white—men. Karen Kelsky (2001) argues that the
erotic and romantic desires of “yellow cabs” for non-Japanese men reflect an
identification with the West. In their rejection of Japanese men, Kelsky reads
cosmopolitan and internationalist aspirations among Japanese women that
serve as an implicit critique and resistance to hegemonic gender norms and
nationalism in Japan. The censure and policing of women in the media and
popular discourses such as these are not produced in an ahistorical vacuum,
but rather are informed by ambivalent ideologies around modernity, history,
and occupation vis-à-vis the West that are projected onto women’s bodies and
mixed-race children.
This dynamic, however, plays out quite differently in Okinawa, where
layers of colonialism and militarization add a more complex and fraught
reality to sexual politics that does not exist in Japan in the same way. Unlike
Japan, as Annmaria Shimabuku argues, the denial of sovereignty and the
confiscation of land by the U.S. military produced Okinawans as “petitioning
subjects”:
The relationship to their land and bodies is not just metaphorical in the sense of
Okinawa’s political exploitation symbolized by an exploited woman. Instead,
the metaphor breaks down as the confiscation of their land means . . . a new
relationship with their very own bodies that literally become a terrain rich in
sexual resources that they must work. . . . The struggle for territorial control col-
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111
lapsed into a struggle for boundaries of sexual control within the human body.
(Shimabuku 2010, 367)
Here, rather than a sign of cosmopolitan desires, sexual relationships between
Okinawan women and American men are interpreted within the context of
defeat and military occupation (as spoils of war) and of economic survival.
The mixed race child indexes a different set of relations and power dynamics
with the U.S. (and with Japan), rather than a product of successful globalization. These differences suggest that our understanding of mixed-race identities must remain highly specific and nuanced. Such a stance is not about
insisting on the essential uniqueness or exceptionalism of cultural identities
and places. Rather, following Lila Abu-Lughod (1991), we must engage in
writing “ethnographies of the particular” to avoid making generalized or essentialist claims about “mixed” identities that claim to speak of all “mixed”
experiences. The highly anticipated documentary Hafu: The Mixed-Race
Experience in Japan was released in 2013 and screened globally following
its release. In their attempt to be inclusive and broad reaching, the documentary profiles haafu individuals representing diverse identities and compelling
stories. However, weaving together stories such as Sophie’s (an Australian
Japanese from Sydney) with that of Fusae (a Korean Japanese raised in Kobe)
was a jarring juxtaposition with little historical or political analysis. The
documentarians may have deliberately left this question open for audiences.
However, one consequence of bringing together this array of individuals under the umbrella of being haafu, is that, as Neriko Musha Doerr writes in her
review of the video, “the different circumstances that each hafu experiences
gets masked by this expansion of what the term “hafu” denotes” (2013, p.
506). Perhaps Martin Manalansan’s criticism of the rainbow flag is applicable
here as well. The rainbow flag is a symbol of queer identity and community,
attempting to embrace and celebrate diversity:
Seemingly disparate bands of color are fused into a unitary amalgam and one
single cultural emblem of queer togetherness and belonging. While these important symbols and meanings of unity provide a potent impetus for community
efforts, they at once obscure contradictory and uneven queer spaces. (2003, 4–5)
Unifying gestures of solidarity and terms of inclusion, in other words, are
defined and set by those with relative privilege. So, too, with calls for community building and alliances across mixed communities in Okinawa and Japan. The resonances in both Okinawa and Japan around experiences of being
mixed may constitute the basis for allyship and trans-regional connections.
However, there are important distinctions and ways in which these experiences cannot be rendered equivalent. The ways in which mixed identities and
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communities are imagined and produced risk hiding deep structural histories
of inequality and racialization that reproduce barriers and relationships of
power. These challenges are especially relevant for Okinawans.
MIXED RACE IN OKINAWA
Mixed race in the Japanese popular imagination is, I argue, Janus-faced.
On the one hand, as I described above, it is a future oriented face in which
mixed race youth embody cosmopolitan values—the new, progressive Japan.
On the other, it faces history—they embody traces of defeat, occupation,
and unequal political and military relations mapped onto sexual relations.
In millennial Japan, in the mainland, the postwar history and stigmatization
of mixed-race children has faded into the background and has largely been
forgotten. In contrast, in Okinawa, the continued pervasive military presence
is a tangible specter (and real material effect) of colonialism and occupation still present in everyday life. Murphy-Shigematsu writes, “[m]ultiethnic
American Japanese have assumed a very symbolic role in popular media and
the arts. They have come to represent not only the American military and
the troubles it has caused in Okinawa, but, more complexly, the reality of
American cultural and political influence. . . .” (2001, p. 215). The temporal
and symbolic duality of both past and future orientations in the mixed race
figure is especially palpable and fraught in Okinawa.
Here, it is critical to highlight the specific conditions which have rendered
mixed-race experiences in Okinawa distinct from those in Japan, without
reducing these distinctions to culturalist explanations or reproducing tropes
of victimhood. The social space of Okinawa can be viewed as a kind of “contact zone,” where “cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often
in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination—such as colonialism and slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived
out across the globe today” (Pratt 1992/2008, 7). In the case of Okinawa,
the ongoing conditions of militarization and of Japanese colonialism (in past
and present forms) necessitate careful self-positioning in which Okinawan
sovereignty and self-determination remain elusive. Okinawans manage on
a daily basis the systemic forms of inequality they face within the Japanese
national body. In both scholarly and vernacular discourse, Okinawa is often
described as being “behind” the rest of Japan, lagging in economic development and educational achievement as well as suffering from a prevalence of
social “problems.” People, both in Okinawa and in Japan, frequently made a
point to tell me that Okinawa has higher rates of divorce, alcoholism, single
mothers, poverty, and unemployment than the rest of Japan. Okinawa is also
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113
known as having a more visibly substantial mixed race population than in the
rest of Japan, and this fact is often mentioned alongside the other “problems,”
as if mixed race children were yet another indicator of supposed underdevelopment.
Mixed race experiences complicated existing discourses and tensions
around Okinawan identity. Mixed Okinawans are often regarded as embodying the condition of a militarized “post”-coloniality in contemporary Okinawa
in ways that do not resonate in Japan. Mitzi Uehara Carter (2014) writes with
nuance about how mixed Okinawans negotiate the asymmetries and confluences of these discourses of identity, even as mixed Okinawans are generally
obscured within more dominant uses of (and traffic in) haafu identities within
Japan. Naomi Noiri (2010) also emphasizes the ways in which mixed race
Okinawans are often overlooked. She outlines the complexity and difficulties
of defining Okinawan identity given its colonial relationship with Japan and
the U.S. This history shapes a dominant Okinawan narrative of victimhood,
according to Noiri, which obscures more nuanced views of minoritization
and marginalization within Okinawa. If Okinawans constitute a minoritized
identity within Japan, then Amerasians, to use her language, are a minority
within a minority. As a consequence, Noiri illustrates how, despite grassroots
activist efforts to ameliorate legal inequities faced by mixed race children
around statelessness and citizenship under occupation, the legal changes
did not address the social stigmatization or lack of cultural citizenship faced
by mixed race children in Okinawa. Furthermore, among mixed children,
blackness has historically been further stigmatized; hierarchies of racial segregation in the U.S. were reproduced in military installments abroad. Hence,
Okinawan businesses and service industries catering to the military also
reproduced segregation (and racism) off-base. While racial segregation is no
longer an active aspect of the military or of the service industries, the effects
of institutionalized racism are still felt.
While the mixed race Japanese adolescent girls in Kamada’s research
can use the cultural capital of the west as a form of social leverage, those
in Okinawa often cannot access the same strategies, even if connections to
the U.S. and the military bases may provide very real economic benefits
and opportunities for upward mobility. Associations and connections with
an American military presence present complicated and ambivalent forms
identification within Okinawa. A few mixed Okinawans I spoke with did not
have parents or family connected to the U.S. military, but because of the political economic landscape in Okinawa, they are nonetheless still read within
the frame of militarization and colonial history. Noiri’s work has focused on
the AmerAsian School established in 1998 by concerned mothers of mixedrace children. The school provides English language education, a safe space,
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and community for mixed children who may otherwise have faced bullying
in schools. As a couple of mixed race Okinawan parents noted to me, not all
parents, however, have the resources available (or the means to seek out the
resources) to send their children to schools like the AmerAsian School. While
I suggest historical and system forms of marginalization serve to complicate
mixed race identities in Okinawa, Welty (2014), on the other hand, highlights
the individual agency of mixed race Okinawans in the face of their doubly
colonized positionality. She argues that many mixed Okinawans do draw
on privileges associated with their transnational connections. Furthermore,
because of the prevalence of mixed race children in Okinawa, she argues that
public sympathies for mixed race children in Okinawa allowed for a greater
recognition of mixed race subjectivities societally. This helped establish
institutions and pathways to assist mixed race children in ways that are not
as readily available in other parts of Japan. Going against the narratives of
victimhood and marginalization, power and privilege, for Welty, cannot be
understood in simplistic either/or terms; rather they are experienced in highly
individual ways.
FAULT LINES OF CLASS, RACE, AND TRANSNATIONALISM
Echoing Welty, individual experiences of being mixed-race in Okinawa
are wide-ranging with diverse life trajectories of individuals. However, the
distinctions are not just anecdotal or about representing the diversity of human experience and identification. They are structurally and systemically
produced. While my argument about hybridity is a broad, conceptual one, in
this section, I draw on an ethnographic example, to discuss the political and
economic contexts particular to Okinawa, and the material conditions produced by a history and ongoing struggle with overlapping regimes of empire
and nationalism.
Amy4 and Mieko5 represent this unevenness in Okinawa, as their lives
intersected and diverged in ways they did not anticipate. Amy is an outgoing,
entrepreneurial mother in her 40s. She is bilingual and feels equally comfortable using English and Japanese. She also is constantly traveling between the
U.S., Okinawa, and mainland Japan. Her social networks are broad, and she
navigates Okinawan and American social worlds with seemingly equal ease.
Her father was a white American working in a U.S. military base in Okinawa.
And her mother, an Okinawan woman, found a job working in the base where
he was stationed. Her parents divorced while Amy was still young. But Amy
was able to maintain a relationship with her father and her American relatives. She described a protective extended family that cared for her and pro-
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vided for her: “I always felt very loved,” she told me. Although her mother
was raising Amy as a single parent in Okinawa, they were financially stable
and received support from her father. Perhaps most significantly, rather than
attending local public schools, she attended a school for mixed-race children.
She credits this environment for providing a protected space for people like
herself. She recounted that she did not experience bullying and the school
provided a space of belonging and validation. As she says, “In fact, I felt I
was one of the cool kids.”
As she grew older, Amy gradually became aware of the fact that some
mixed race Okinawan children were living under very different circumstances
than hers. She began to encounter and meet other mixed race children who
attended local schools, and who were bullied and felt isolated. One memory
of this that stood out to her was of a mixed girl riding the bus alone. She was
wearing a regular public school uniform. She also kept staring at Amy and
seemed to want to talk and connect with her, but Amy did not think much
of it. Amy regrets not reaching out to her when she had the opportunity, but
only when she was older did she fully realize how different their lives were
from hers. Looking back on that encounter and on how her childhood was
different from other mixed race Okinawans, Amy carries around a feeling of,
in her words, “survivor’s guilt.”
Amy’s life trajectory is not uncomplicated or without difficulties, despite
her position of relative privilege. But her experiences are vastly different
from those such as Mieko, a mixed Black Okinawan woman. Whereas many
mixed Okinawan and mixed Japanese individuals I knew went by an English
name, even if they were not given an English name at birth, Mieko stood out
for her persistence in using her Japanese given name. Her mixed Okinawan
friends admired her fortitude in not relenting to what they perceived as social
pressures of using an English name to ease interactions within Okinawan
society. As a child, Mieko lived in the care of another family, as her mother
had to juggle multiple jobs. Mieko attended the local school where there were
only a handful of other mixed students in other classes. Her blackness made
her especially visible and isolated. She was bullied or teased by classmates,
and received little sympathy or support from her teachers, an experience
familiar to many other mixed children. Mieko later discovered her mother
had wanted to have an abortion while pregnant with Mieko. As a teenager,
this knowledge contributed to her strained relationship with her mother. She
does not know who her biological father is and has not been successful in
searching for him. Having grown up poor in Okinawa and attending local
schools, she never had the opportunity to learn English. Over the years, she
has made concerted efforts to learn the language. Her desire to learn English
was twofold: she thought English would help her find information about her
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father. Being able to speak English would also provide her with more job
opportunities—and opportunities for upward mobility—related to the American military presence. She bears a heavy sense of responsibility toward her
children, who she feels has inherited some of the trauma and legacies of her
own experiences, and she wants to give them opportunities that were inaccessible to her.
Identifying as haafu or mixed then does not guarantee a set of shared experiences on which to build connections and communities. One mixed woman
from mainland Japan who relocated to Okinawa relayed to me her realization that being haafu in Okinawa has distinct and profound challenges than
what she faced as a child growing up in Japan, and she was keenly aware
of a limit to her ability to understand and relate with mixed Okinawans in
her hopes to be an effective ally. Mixed race identities are often described
in terms of hybridity, where the dissolution of boundaries create something
distinct and new, beyond the sum of its parts. In Okinawa, and I suspect in
other contact zones as well, these boundaries are often reproduced rather than
transcended, and the consequences for people’s lived realities are significant.
The labels and categories hide the deep rifts and forms of unevenness that
are the product, in the case of Okinawa, of military and colonial dominance,
in both historical and contemporary forms. The divisions then are structural
and systemic. They are often organized around the fences (metaphorical and
real) of the military bases, building on gender, race, and class inequalities.
These divisions are a form of segregation that determines opportunities for
education, upward mobility, and transnational linkages. It also affects the
kinds of personal resources available to individuals in how they identify and
their ability to position themselves within different social contexts. The factor
determining which side of the fence one falls as a mixed child is very often
the presence or absence of the American biological father.
When I interviewed Amy, she spoke of her excitement when she was first
introduced to Mieko. Both were outgoing and extroverted, and about the
same age. They shared a similar sense of humor. Initially, they got along
well, could relate to each other on the basis of being mixed, and they seemed
inseparable. They were brought together because they both initially identified
each other as haafu. However, ultimately differences in class and cultural
capital were too great to surmount, despite Amy’s desires to share and extend
her cultural capital with Mieko. While one enjoyed a successful career and
a broad social network, the other struggled to make ends meet and, limited
by language and habitus, felt uncomfortable crossing into other, more transnational social circles. She described how attempts to help her friend with
contacts and job opportunities created distance and awkwardness between
them, and Mieko never followed through. Amy summed up the difficulties in
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity
117
their friendship by saying, “I love her to death, but we can’t be friends. We
are just too different.” By “different,” she was not referring to personality
differences, but to socio-economic and cultural differences which put them
in starkly unequal positions of power in relation to each other. Being mixed
Okinawan was not enough to transcend these intersectional differences.
CRITIQUING HYBRIDITY
Hybridity is frequently used to describe and analyze the effects of colonialism
and contemporary forms of globalization. The concept found fertile ground
in studies of transnationalism and diasporas in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Lost in the broadness and openness of the term “hybridity” is, I believe,
Homi Bhabha’s (1994) initial impulse to analyze power and agency as it is
leveraged and transformed within the postcolonial subject. The unevenness
of mixed race experiences—both in Japan and in Okinawa—require us to
critically re-examine and complicate the focus on “identity” through such
concepts as hybridity; hybridity too easily celebrates identities that traverse
borders and categories without attention to material conditions of power and
systems of inequality.
Critical mixed race studies has been gaining momentum as an interdisciplinary field within academia and stepping back to this wider view may
offer a more complex perspective from which to consider hybridity and
the formation of “mixed race” as a globally legible identity category. Efforts to consider or imagine a global hapa or mixed race “community” or
subject, much like discourses of global indigeneity, risk celebrating a facile
rendering of diversity and cosmopolitanism while erasing profound forms of
unevenness. There is now, however, a growing body of notable scholarship
that productively extends research and theory of mixed race politics within
transnational and comparative frameworks (Daniel et al. 2014, King-O’Riain
et al. 2014, Parker and Song 2001). Situating mixed race politics beyond
the US-Okinawa-Japan triangular frame illuminates an underlying thread
of the systemic and structural effects of U.S. militarization, sexual politics,
globalization, and neocolonialism rather than its exceptionalism (Lutz and
Enloe 2009, Vine 2015). The ethnographic renderings of the materialities,
unevenness, and social construction of mixed race experiences in specific
geopolitical contexts—such as Korea (Cho 2008, Lee 2008, Okazawa-Rey
1997) or Vietnam (Ngô 2005, Valverde 1992, Yarborough 2005)—bring nuance to understandings of the macro-level structural issues of international
relations and the politics of the global economy. That is, extending beyond
the triangulated frame of US-Okinawa-Japan relations provides of a view of
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the broader history of the cold war and the U.S. military in the Pacific while
simultaneously highlighting the specificities of the distinctly shaped Okinawa
on the level of lived experience.
Here, I think the debates around identity categories, labels, and naming are
informative. Besides words that are now outdated or considered derogatory,
some have urged that the term “half” or “haafu” be abandoned and replaced
with the term “double.” Others, such as the producers of the Hafu Project,
recognize the debate but feel that the term haafu is acceptable because
“double” is overly positive. Byron Fija, a well-known language activist and
musician in Okinawa, maintains that the term “double” is not any better than
“half” for people like him since he does not culturally identify as American
and grew up without any ties to his American kin. The expectation of plurality becomes a burden, and perhaps a reminder of cultural loss or lack. Byron
Fija has settled on the term he coined, amerika-kei uchinaanchu [American
Okinawan]. In explaining to me why he made this choice, he said: “Double is
just as hurtful and discriminatory to me as being called half. Because I don’t
know my American side. I am not double. . . . In the U.S., you call yourself
Japanese American to indicate that you are an American who happens to
be of Japanese descent. In the same way, I am an Okinawan of American
descent.” He has been active in trying to create a network of people who
identify as amerika-kei uchinaanchu because, he noted, there has been no
structural support or community for people like him and of his generation.
While the AmerAsian School is an important space and community for mixed
race children in Okinawa, such schools were neither available nor something
his family would have been able to afford had it been an option for him when
he was school-aged.
Attempts to create alliances across haafu communities and experiences can
prove to be difficult. One man I spoke with expressed appreciation but also
frustration with haafu networking events. In bilingual or multilingual gatherings, English often ends up taking precedence and more space in the discussions, despite the best of intentions, making some Japanese speakers feel
more hesitant about participating. This dominance of English also influences
the topics and perspectives that are privileged. The ability to speak English
and to be multilingual frequently signifies the habitus of a higher education,
greater cultural capital, and class mobility. Thus, attempts to create dialogue
and alliances may inadvertently reproduce hierarchies and inequalities.
The question of naming is raised frequently, in both Japanese and in English. I suggest that this question represents a productive resistance to reification and coherence. Writing about this topic requires naming and describing
the subject of analysis, and this practice is inherently objectifying and reductive. The producers of the Hafu Project which attempts to represent mixed
Fault Lines of Occupation, Limits of Hybridity
119
race Japan suggest that “[h]afu has become almost like a nation or an ethnic
group of some sort within Japan. Hafu is not only a description but an entity
in itself” (Hafu Project). Spaces and opportunities for creating connections
and solidarity, where stories and experiences can be shared and represented
across differences are important. However, the narratives of haafu and mixed
race Okinawans actively complicate this idea put forth by the Hafu Project,
the idea that “hafu is an entity in itself.” People themselves are drawing on
haafu discourse not to create a new ethnic group necessarily (though one
may argue that there is a time and place for pan-ethnic mobilizations), but
to expand the way we think of ethnicity and minorities belonging in Japan,
Okinawa, and the world more broadly. This ongoing contestation around the
term requires a constant attentiveness to difference and inclusion that I think
is useful. And this is where theories of hybridity from the genealogies of
cultural studies remain relevant, in that rather than looking at hybridity or the
hybrid as an object of study in itself, we can think of hybridity as a practice
in which identity categories are both contested and utilized as strategies for
negotiating power and belonging.
NOTES
1. This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
and the University of Tokyo, Komaba. I thank Shinji Yamashita and Yujin Yaguchi
for their steady mentorship and guidance. Ryan Yokota has been an abiding friend
and colleague to whom I am deeply indebted. I am grateful for the countless people
who have generously helped me along the way in this project, and most especially to
those in Okinawa and Tokyo who shared their time, space, connections, and stories
with me.
2. In my forthcoming article, I suggest that multiculturalism is an empty concept, a
cipher. Rather than using the term multiculturalism as inherently descriptive or evaluative of specific national spaces or social phenomena, we should analyze instead how
discourses of multiculturalism are used in shaping how nations imagine themselves.
3. While not an exhaustive list, see, for example: Befu 2001, Denoon et al. 1996;
Douglass and Roberts 2000; Graburn et al. 2008; McConnell 2000; Ryang 1997,
2000; Weiner 1997, 2000; Iwabuchi and Takezawa 2015, 2008; Willis and MurphyShigamatsu, eds, Hankins 2014).
4. A pseudonym.
5. A pseudonym.
Chapter Seven
Champurū Text
Decolonial Okinawan Writing
Ariko S. Ikehara
This chapter situates Okinawan writing in decolonial context of what I am
calling the champurū text. “Champurū” is an Okinawan word for mixing and/
or being mixed, and often refers to the Okinawan way of blending cultures
including culinary ones. “Third” is decolonial concept used in multiple disciplinary fields that, in general, resists the binary productions of knowledge,
which often arises from the colonial process of separation, categorization
and/or naming. Champurū text is a “third expression,” which Marjorie Garber
aptly defines as “a mode of articulation, a way of describing a space of possibility. Three puts in question the idea of one: of identity, self-sufficiency,
self-knowledge” (Garber 1992, 11). Or it can also be expressed through what
Trinh T. Minh-Ha posits as a space of its own that is not a derivative of first
and second but “formed in the process of hybridization which, rather than
simply adding a here to a there, gives rise to an elsewhere-within-here/-there
that appears both too recognizable and impossible to contain” (Trinh 2011,
37). The concept of the decolonial possibility is formulated through a culmination of theories of “third” that draws from multiple disciplinary fields and
praxis such as performance art, women of color feminist theory, and radical
black traditions where “third” is a performative and radical intervention for
alternative knowledge productions.
This chapter examines how, as a third text, champurū writing yields to
Okinawa’s postwar life and landscape of overlapping borders of place,
“race,” and space that are intimately and intrinsically bound and formulated
in the backdrop of the U.S. military occupation and presence. Champurū text
explores the middle, a space between word/text and world/life, of neither
American nor Okinawan, but a third possibility in mixed-lingual-ling words/
worlds of Champurū, offering the champurū text of fecundity between words/
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worlds. Okinawa’s champurū text expresses a third context—mixing and
multiplying of words in a constantly changing world in Okinawa’s postwar
life—that emerges in between text and life, and creates a new space of expression. Through the literary works of three Okinawan writers, Sakiyama
Tami, Yoshihara Komachi, and Nakada Tsuyoshi, I offer champurū text as an
interpretative tool that illuminates the performative space between fiction and
life. Life in this context is mixed and non-binary that hails the “American”
element in the category of Okinawan or Asian in context of the postwar culture, history, and society, unsettling the idea of Asia as foreign, the “Other,”
and non-Western.
Asia and Asian languages are still marginalized in the academy and often
represented through the binary systems of the West and the rest, rendering
Asia in colonial representations of the foreign, the exotic, and “the other.”
Yet Okinawans and Asians are acutely aware not only of the history and aftermath of American wars and occupation in Asia, but also of the pastness of
history that continues today, affecting the everyday life that interfaces with
the American element vis-à-vis the presence of American military bases in
places such as South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, and Okinawa (see
chapter 5). And more importantly, most Americans are unaware of or able
to “forget” the impact of their own presence in the foreign countries they occupy. Okinawa’s 72-year-old postwar history that persists in its continuance
of the U.S. military bases has not passed not only for Okinawa, but also for
America. Here, Champurū writing functions as a site of knowledge, a living
archive that records, narrates, and questions history as in Michel Trouillot’s
term, pastness, a “position.” The text in its critical and creative power of
articulation hails the American element of the mundane life of war and military occupation in Asia as not the past, but as very much part of the present.
Champurū text resituates Okinawan literature in the middle that emerges as
a third passage that opens the interpretative and structural borders between
text and life. While the text functions similarly with the minor, postcolonial,
decolonial, and indigenous writing, the nature of the performing maintains
the performance art praxis of the text in its transitional and strategic crossing
of life/art in the now. Here, text is performative; it expresses the mores, the
sense, the style, the position, and the possibility of literature as a site of decolonial writing. Through such method, I show how these writers bring to light
what has been in the shadow, whether colonial, imperial, or racial, through
writing in between text and life in positioning Okinawa/n as third. Okinawa’s
postwar cultural texts, performances, and expressions in third context hail
Okinawa’s American presence while at the same time pointing to Okinawan
factor and actor (f/actor) in a mundane, common, and unspectacular sense of
champurū.
Champurū Text
123
In positioning this text within Japanese and Okinawan studies, my work
reinforces the vital role that Asia and Asian language via Okinawa plays in
productions of knowledge by deploying decolonial, postcolonial, and critical
praxis in the fields of Japanese, Okinawan, and American studies. My method
brings a unique comparative lens to the study of history, culture, “race,” identity, place, nation, and empire from the trans-Pacific border where power and
people intersect. Pursuing decolonial possibility of a third possibility through
literary texts, my work brings the Asia Pacific into the folds of Western
academe via Okinawa and Japan by situating the Asian language (Japanese
and Okinawan) as a primary text and site of knowledge, practices that builds
bridges among various disciplinary fields.1
The postwar literature I focus here centers on the postwar life of Koza
(now Okinawa City), a former military town where America and Okinawa
blurred and emerged as a third space that presented, as one scholar described,
a “peculiar atmosphere,” and people as belonging to a “third race,” “neither
belong[ing] to Japan nor American” (Iguchi 2006: 4). Here the third bears
something new, the factor and actor of Okinawa (Okinawan f/actor) that
offers a possibility beyond the binary representation of place, “race,” and
space. Newness that lingers in the origin of Koza, even while the name was
changed to Okinawan City in 1974, the origin is retained through the popular
consumption and love of Koza as an interpretive sign of peace, a logo for
multicultural celebration of culture, and a promise for a vibrant economic
future. As a mixed sign, the city signals the ending of the formal occupation
and the beginning of a new Japanese administration, undergirded by the elements of colonial, imperial, and racial traces lingering in the mundane-ness
of this new life. While the U.S. military occupation ended in 1972, the ongoing presence of the U.S. military bases on Okinawa is the mundane fact of
life. As a third space, Koza bears witness to the non-changing history and the
reality of a 72-year (and ongoing) U.S. military presence in Okinawa. Koza
represents this paradox of life for Kozans living at the crossroads of power
and people, negotiating its Okinawan space as a critical and creative f/actor in
the making of its history, memory, and stories. A champurū text illuminates
the performative space in between literature and life to illustrate the paradox
of Koza that is neither American nor Japanese, and to some extent, no longer
“Okinawan.”
I first situate Sakiyama Tami’s writing praxis as a framework to illustrate
the act of writing “Okinawa” in multitude as decolonizing word/world that
she exhibits through the use of shimakutuba (island language) as a strategy
to produce a language of possibility. I then discuss the local Kozan writers,
Yoshihara Komachi (real name, Kishimoto Katsuji) and Nakada Tsuyoshi’s
works, to do a champurū reading respectively by illuminating champurū
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f/actor as a third that offers decolonial possibilities. In their respective stories,
the authors link different nodes of colonial history and present and produce
a champurū effect in their text that blurs the line between life and fiction,
literature and history, past and present, and so on and so forth.
KOZA BEFORE AND AFTER:
THE LANGUAGE OF SAKIYAMA TAMI
Sakiyama Tami (b. 1954) is an unconventional writer who writes from the
“in between” spaces of Okinawa, the U.S. military, and Japan, offering the
champurū f/actor of fecundity between words/worlds.2 As a writer who is not
bound by an “Okinawan subject,” Sakiyama acknowledges her complicity
in the production of a fixed image of Okinawa in the process of unhinging
herself from that same image through her writing (Okumoto 2007, 191). Sakiyama’s use of language is demonstrated through the shimakutuba (island
language), which is the inter-mixing of different Okinawan languages and
mixing of Japanese that is best described as inter-mixed-lingual-ling. My use
of the –ling is to show the mixing and multiplying potential in the language.
According to Japanese language and literary scholar Davinder Bhowmik, Sakiyama presents “Okinawa” that goes against “the entire body of Okinawan
fiction (which) is fraught with the issue of language” (Bhowmik, 2008, 11).
The “issue” conjures up the ghost of the past, a deep scarring history of
colonialism that disciplined Okinawans for being Okinawan and speaking
Okinawan language in the late nineteenth century. Bhowmik refers to the
Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 (Kyōiku ni kansuru chokugo) as
technologies of oppression by which language and “being” Okinawan were
both prohibited by policy and policed by the Japanese imperial regime (6).
Alan Christy further contextualizes the process of Okinawan assimilation in
mainland Japan through the “Lifestyle Reform Movement” of the 1920s and
1940s. In this movement, the Japanese state regarded Okinawan clothing,
walking, speaking and music as signs of laziness and backwardness (Christy,
1993, 613). As we often find in other stories and histories of colonialism,
passing was both an instrument of assimilation and a tool of resistance for
the colonized and oppressed, and as such, Okinawans too deployed both
strategies. Thus “Okinawan subject” is, at best, equivocal and needs further
explication. Sakiyama, as an Okinawan female writer, neither gives up nor
resists the constructed Okinawan subject of the inferior or the authentic, but
cuts to the middle, moving through the aporia of this contested subject called
“Okinawa/n.” A new expression emerges, a text made up of various island
languages of shimakutuba (Okinawan) and standard Japanese, producing a
Champurū Text
125
kind of mixed-lingual-ling effect, or in Davinder L. Bhomik’s words, “Sakiyama’s writing has come to virtually defy description” (Bhowmik 2008,
158). Writing in shimakutuba induces the effect of champurū-ing the textual
space of words and worlds in interactive and performative motion thereby
reconfiguring ways of interpreting in simultaneous multiplicity. Shima
means “island” in both Okinawan and Japanese languages but nonetheless
defies equivalency in both. In Japanese, “islands” refer to the many islands
of the Japanese archipelago. In Okinawan, this refers not only to islands in
this first sense, but also to villages or spaces within islands themselves. This
includes variations in language or dialect within the Okinawa islands. Hence,
shimakutuba looks at Okinawa’s linguistic diversity from within. Sakiyama’s
prose is written in both standard Japanese and shimakutuba that in writing
become audible, sounding out the f/actor through the usage of the images and
sounds of shima (“island,” also understood as “Okinawa”). Sakiyama does
not follow the imperial code of Okinawa, a place of “healing” (iyashi) or
“nostalgia” (natsukashī), or the colonial image of Okinawans, “backwards.”
Rather her “Okinawa/n” is creative and created through the stories that twist
and churn inside and outside of the narratives that do not rest or relent in the
ways the readers, both Japanese and Okinawans, connect and disconnect to
“Okinawa” that performs. This performative mode resonates with the concept
of disidentification of what late performance theorist José Muñoz describes
as “the third mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither opts
to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology” (Muñoz
1999, 11). While Muñoz’s theorization of the queer bodies in performative
mode differs from my own site of inquiry that looks at language of performativity, both are in conversation as we align our method with women of
color feminist praxis in centering the body (queer subject, Okinawan subject,
or Okinawa as body of islands) to make the argument salient, respectively.
While Bhowmik argues that Sakiyama dismantles the genre and “perversely
confounds all readers” by “deterritorializing” Okinawa through her writing
(Bhowmik, 4), the author also observes Okinawa is still identifiable in Sakiyama’s work (5). This Okinawa is the champurū f/actor that presents a third
context of decolonial possibility.
In her short essay, “A Landscape of Words: The One in Between Appa,
Anna and Obaa,” Sakiyama captures the epistemological operation by
transforming one word into three that disrupts the conventions of a national
language’s arbitrary signification to an already set meaning. This allows one
to see that the linguistic form is no longer predicated on its access to the
epistemological content, but rather takes a different path that allows the flow
of in and out to access the third possibility, to offer the language’s fecundity
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of opening to multiple possibilities. To continue to move in that direction,
Trinh T. Minh-Ha moves us to think “Many in one between (s)” that she indeed calls the “third term,” that aligns with her Asian-ness with a late Korean
American artist/director/writer, Theresa Hakyung Cha’s Asian-ness, which is
not based on “race” or ethnicity, but convenes with a third context of their
subject formation that “keeps the creative potential of a new relationship
alive between strategic nationality and transnational political alliance” (Trinh
2011, 112). This third of “many in one between (s)” exists for Saikiyama’s
use of shimakutuba (island language in Okinawa) or what the Okinawan
literary scholar Ikue Kina calls “island tongues” (Kina 2011, 21). A word
that describes a “grandmother,” for Sakiyama, has three genealogies: Appa
(grandmother of the Kadeshiro family), Anna (Sakiyama’s grandmother), and
Obaa (grandmother in Okinawan). These names bear the experience of her
living in a mixed community of people from various Japanese and Okinawan
islands where hearing and speaking a mixed-lingual shimakutuba influenced
Sakiyama’s so-called “chaotic” sensibility and formulation of language (Sakiyama 2012, 190). Through the mixed-lingual-ling effect and its affectivity,
she is able to see her Appa in Anna, and chooses Obaa, a cheerful sound,
instead of the other two, which have “darker connotations” (191). The difference is produced not only in sound, but also through history that plays a role
in making obaa the image of “happy” in the 2001 NHK TV series that was
a hit throughout Japan: “Chura-san” (Hook and Siddle 2003, 6). The happy
image replaces the inferior and the backwards, which maintains power and the
status quo as Hook and Siddle explain, “islanders are being deprived of the
power to define what is the ‘authentic’ Okinawa and Okinawan, with media
interests in Tokyo and elsewhere, which lie outside the prefecture, generating, nurturing and spreading their particular images” (Hook and Siddle 2003,
6). Against such image of the “happy” produced by the media, Sakiyama’s
happy is rendered as a third term, “one in many in between(s),” and indeed a
possibility for difference. She writes, “in my novel [these words] do not refer
to anything with real substance, but they may refer to something dead and
lost or refer to another hope and love for something yet to come” (Sakiyama
2004, 191). Here, she gives the opening for possibility of emergence of new
(in)formation. Rendering the word “grandmother” in a multifold signifier,
she confounds the dominant structure of language by evoking the realm of
the experiential and experimental of “one in many in between(s)” as a space
for writing Okinawa/n.
Ikue Kina’s articulation of Sakiyama’s use of Okinawan “tongues” through
Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s “borderlands” is an example that suggests to me Sakiyama is an experimental writer in traditions of the avant-garde. In her article
titled “Locating Sakiyama Tami’s Literary Voice in Globalizing Okinawan
Champurū Text
127
Literature,” Kina explains, Sakiyama’s “stories are told within the logic and
vision of the borderlands as the center” or “chasm of Okinawan society as deliberate choice.” Sakiyama thereby “creates a logic that justifies agency in the
borderlands” (Kina, 2011: 21). Situating Okinawa as a borderland provides
the framework for understanding how language is born in what Kina translated in Sakiyama’s text as the “edge,” “‘the place emerging in between the
mutually exclusive landscapes” or ‘chasm in everyday life’” (20). Champurū
text emerges from “the edge” of Sakiyama’s hometown, Koza, which is a
city with the name that is “one in many in between(s),” for there are many
speculative etymologies of Koza as Koja, Kuja, and Gosa with no determining source that authorizes one over the others.
Sakiyama’s short stories of Kuja or what Kina calls Kuja series, seven
total, were published in a popular literary magazine called Subaru. In Kuja,
which is Koza in Okinawan pronunciation, Sakiyama’s text rushes like a vortex in a champurū operatic force, combining the sound and texture of words,
events, history, story, and mystery through the voices of hybrid real-imagined
characters. This combinatory style obscures reality and takes a flight into the
surreal with a certainty of other obscured reality moving through the gaps,
moving in between the texts. This movement in between texts produces a
mix-multiplying effect of champurū. Reviewing Sakiyama’s Kuja series
Kina finds in Sakiyama’s text the plurality of the “abyss of uchinā-guchi that
includes ‘the visible living beings, the invisible dead, and souls/lives, who
have voices in her narrative’” (Kina 2008, 62). Shimakutuba is the abyss of
uchina-guchi referenced here, which carries the multivocality that speaks in
the sensual/visceral sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch of Okinawa in
Sakiyama’s stories that require a different writing and reading to allow the
chance, the possibility, and the opening for something new, the unthinkable,
the improper, the other to emerge. “Kotōyume dūchuimuni” (Solitary Island
Dream Soliloquy) (Subaru, 1:25:1, 2006) is such story that turns a table
around through the co-opting of the gaze between the colonized and the colonizer, and in turn offers the third eye witness—which is the diligent reader,
fan or academic, whose labor is to follow the changes in the symbolic roles
of the characters and the ubiquitous signifiers flying from multiple directions
at once—to enter the champurū zone.
“Solitary Island Dream Soliloquy” is one of the Kuja series, which begins
with the Japanese freelance photographer whose intention was to photograph
Okinawa’s scenery of ocean and everyday life that is not Japan. Unexpectedly, he is “spirited away” into a dreamy world of Koza’s entertainment district where performance multiplies into a surrealistic event that crosses into
life, blurring the line between the performer and the audience, and turning
the lens from the one who is looking to one who is looked at. The photogra-
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pher takes the bus to Okinawa, but accidently gets off at a place called Kuja
and stumbles into a dreamy, surreal, and visceral space of a small theater
house. A last vestige of the yesteryear of occupied Okinawa, the theater and
the performer named Takaesu Maria together take him on a surrealistic ride
that turns his gaze back onto him as he is made to listen, not gaze, into her
world full of complex fragments that are thrown into the air through Maria’s
surrealistic performance right before his eye. As he stepped off the bus, he
left this world, entered that world and encountered, those people in that time
of occupation where Okinawa was neither Japan nor America. This place is
full of theater houses decorated with full of show pamphlets. He picks up a
pamphlet that read:
“Do you remember this time? Please recall those people from that city” [Italic
added]
In the above quote, “People” and “City” are written in katakana, a Japanese
writing system for foreign words. The city here is Koza, which was the first
“American town,” a bar and entertainment district for the soldiers during the
occupation. Kuja alludes to Koza’s uncertain etymology that creates a sense
of mystery and nostalgia of the place and the name, producing a structure of
feeling of this untenable multiplicity. Koza, formally known as Kuja, is a city
associated with the American occupation of Okinawa. In 1974, two years after
the official ending of the American occupation in 1972, the city gave itself a
new name, Okinawa City, to symbolize both the end of the American occupation and the start of the new Japanese era: a birth of the postwar/occupation
Okinawa in the backdrop of the on-going American military presence. While
Koza is no longer an official name for the city, the name lingers in the place
and is still being used by the people, both Kozans and the city government to
make use of the past—history, legacy and identity as an American city—for the
present production of culture toward a future economic prosperity as well as to
preserve the Koza spirit, the cultural and ideological symbolism of Kozans as
neither Japanese nor American. I define “People” here as Kozans who possess
this spirit, those who have lived through the occupation and those who have
lived when Koza was Koza, Kuja, or other moniker of Koza. Takaesu Maria’s
mixed-race-ness and gender as Filipina and American signal us back to that
time and to those people who lived and experienced the actual war, occupation,
and reversion. That (factor) and Those (actor) become affective in evoking a
different champurū Okinawa/n f/actor that emerges from the pastness of history
onto a contemporary staging of a story in overlapping surrealistic loop.
Rather than tracking the multivocality and pan-directional movement of
the story, for the purpose of this chapter, I focus on the format of her writing,
using various forms of Japanese and Okinawan, mixing, deconstructing, and
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recombining (champuru-ing) in producing the surreal-real story. Below quote
is taken from a scene of Maria’s one-woman soliloquy:
So let me tell you what the era was like. In the allies, the city was overflowing
with American soldiers who go to and come back from the battlefield. First we
thought they were “mussai mussai” [an ideophone for “scruffy” or dirty, denoting the military exercise/patrol] in the city during the daytime, but at night, this
became a place for rest and relaxation to “takkuwaimukkuwai” [an ideophone
for depicting the suggestive sexual intimacy through the body movement of two
people walking very closely, or embracing or kissing passionately] with girls.
These [soldiers] are people who are the contract killers who follow the State order! Omg, there’s no place of escape, it’s the act of madness to kill or be killed,
exposed under the dim city light, how can I put it, well, let see, it’s like, “haa
iiaaa iiiaaa.” The strange voices were heard almost every night. As if the night
crew resembling a crowd of moths. (92)
What I want to elucidate here is the use of disintegrated and fragmentary language form on the levels of word and expression. The word is amalgamated
in Japanese Kanji form (Chinese character) and Okinawan speech written in
katakana form (Japanese syllabary used to denote foreign words, similar to
italics used in English) in creating a kind of hybridized word of one with multiple forms, signifiers, meanings, and connotations of Japanese, English and
Okinawan. The word for “American soldiers” is written in Japanese katakana
to denote the correct use of the syllabary for foreign word, but is written in Okinawan accent, heetaitaa (in Japanese, heitai), an expression used in an everyday conversation, found in classic Okinawan poems, writing, and expression,
as well as used in Okinawan performance art, folk music, dance, and plays. Another Okinawan word, hingibasyo (In Japanese, negeba), which means a place
of escape, is reconfigured through amalgamating different parts in one word:
Japanese kanji on top of Okinawan word in katakana, in the middle of the “escape,” the Okinawan speech for “to” is in Japanese foreign symbol, katakana,
then finally ends with Japanese kanji, for “place.” Finally, the word does not
exist formally or linguistically in Japanese or Okinawan; it is a champurūed text
produced at the crossroads of race, place, and space in Sakiyama’s and other
Okinawan writers’ work that embody an Okinawan f/actor among other factors
(i.e., war, military, occupation, and the postwar life).
On second and third paragraphs of the quotes above, she uses the Okinawan expressions, “mussai mussai” and “taakuwaimukkuwai” to depict
the familiar scene of the bar and entertainment district of Koza in how one
remembers in visual and visceral images of different bodies (military men,
couples, girls) moving and shifting from day to night, and place/bar to place/
battleground. The expressions in the familiarity of the place evoke the sound
of the time of occupation when soldiers come in as an oppressor, bringing
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down the reign of terror and violence of war through the image and sound
of soldiers in duty in military uniforms and black leather boots. Visual and
visceral effects of soldiers jogging in unison making the sound, “left right
left, left right left,” patrolling the place, looking for any criminal activities or
resolving black-white racial conflicts are etched in both the streetscape and
mindscape of Kozans as everyday life events under occupation. In the night,
the sexual mood and the neon lights shine against those couple’s bodies as
they walk, talk, drink, laugh, and dance in the streets and/or inside the bars.
The sounds of the “mussai mussai” and “taakuwaimukkuwai” as expressions
are not Japanese or American, but Okinawan that point at that time and space
of Koza/Okinawa for those who were there and call themselves Kozans today
in spite of the name no longer official. Maria, who is Filipina and American,
is that Kozan who tells the American occupation story delivered in Sakiyama’s champurū text as Okinawan f/actor. While the protagonist like the real
Japanese people may not have experienced or understood Okinawan time and
space of the occupation, he and the reader are situated to listen to her story.
Sakiyama’s writing of mixing, deconstructing, and recombining language
effectively changes the way the occupation and Okinawan stories are told in
reversal wherein Okinawan speaks and Japanese listens. This champurū text
emerges from the cracks between text and life, creating a third passage to pass
on information to those who listen (i.e., the reader).
In the sixth line, an Okinawan expression “haaiiaaa iiiaaa” written in
katakana refers to a call-and-response phrase, “haaiiiaaa iiaaa saaa saaa,”
which is used in an Okinawan traditional taiko performance, eisaa that signals the start of a performance. The response that follows after the call is
“saa saaa,” which upon hearing, the music and performance begin, and later,
the call-and-response session might return again somewhere in the middle
and/or at the end. Sakiyama’s use of the expression is performative—an
Okinawan speech written in katakana syllabary gains a double meaning of
the expression as both Okinawan and foreign, which confounds “Okinawa”
as “America,” foreign, and/or not Japan. The imagery of American soldiers
flooding the streets and backstreets of Koza—kill or be killed—alludes to
that colonial difference between three nations that still exists today. Thus the
word conjures up multiple time and space of history as pastness, and paints a
strangely ironic and iconic sense and reality of the champurū zone.
The incomplete call of Sakiyama’s version of “haaiiaaa iiaaa” in missing
the phrase “saa saa” gives a different reading that occurred at the site of this
missing link. One could draw on many possible threads here, but I focus on
space between the two that allows a third articulation of her use of the expression “haaiiaaa iiaaa.” I suggest the incompleteness of the call-and-response
gained a doubled meaning in both directions: in Okinawan term, it is the
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eisaa, the performance that creates a specifically Okinawan space of unifying mind, body and spirit through the traditional performance by and for the
people that is not American or Japanese. In American term, it is the military
order that transforms men into soldiers, developing the mind/body/spirit into
a killer machine. It is the meta-call-to-response that continues to champurū
in and beyond the text like a codex (Pérez) or “strategic bilingualism” (Fabi)
that speaks volume out and through the opening, made by the gap, slippage,
and stopgap that occur in Sakiyama’s writing, which requires one to read
in between, betwixt, and beyond the impossibility of language. While I am
not offering a full analysis of Sakiyama’s literature in this chapter, I refer to
Kina’s remark about Sakiyama’s Kuja series as a sentiment I share along the
line of language as a becoming process. Kina writes,
In Sakiyama’s novel, there is a resonance of countless voices of “others” whose
consciousness is transferred to the writer’s desire for a different teleology or
indirection of the story. Indeed, this is a life that fights for commensuration
between death and compassion. While at the same time, I wonder whether this
could be a sign of the “language” of a new life emerging out of a story (64)
(Author’s translation)
In such proposition, Sakiyama’s use of kuja may be an expression of the
in-between-ness of Koza-before and Koza-emerging, which I explore as a
space of possibility for decolonial difference. Here, in between before and
emerging, I find the Okinawan f/actor illuminated through the champurū text
in the works of the local Kozans that offer decolonial possibility of a way of
the mundane.
THE INTIMACY OF THE MUNDANE LIFE: THE WRITINGS OF
YOSHIHARA KOMACHI AND NAKADA TSUYOSHI
Yoshihara Komachi’s novella Kana (2012) depicts the beginning transformation of Okinawa at a refugee camp told by a young girl name Kana. Nakada
Tsuyoshi’s short story, The Black District Red Telephone Booth, shows the
everyday life in a bar and entertainment district called Teruya’s Black District, which tells a story of a grandmother and her mixed Okinawan-black
granddaughter. These two stories show how everyday people survived the
paradox of reality and thrived during the occupation, making Koza as a third
space of possibility expressed through the characters’ uncanny representations of real people who could be our mothers, grandmothers, daughters,
friends, neighbors, strangers, and Americans in a real champurūed life.
Yoshihara Komachi’s novella, Kana, received the 2012 New Okinawan Literary Award. It is a story that takes place in Camp Koza, the first internment
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camp created after the Battle of Okinawa, and the beginning of transformation
of Okinawa as an American territory.3 The fiction is based on the author’s reality of living day-to-day witnessing the lived experience of Okinawans who
experienced the war, the internment camp, and the postwar life that formed
this Okinawan American Champurū story. The author, real name, Kishimoto
Katsuji, a native of the Yoshihara district of Koza, is an acupuncturist who
writes short stories, combining history and everyday life into a semi-fictional
narrative. The author’s lived experience with Okinawans and Americans in
Koza informs his writing. I therefore read the story of Kana as a codex with
simultaneous multiple signifiers that produces a champurū’s textual space between fiction and non-fiction revealing the pastness of history through which
the Okinawa’s champurū f/actor emerges as a third expression.
Narrated by a five-year old girl named Kana, the story takes place in the
Kamara internment camp (eventually renamed Koza Camp), which was established immediately after the start of the war. The novella opens with her
slowly recovering from amnesia, and seeing life in transition, from home life
to a new camp life in the aftermath of war. The situation is fuzzy and unsettling as people make sense of the place, other people, and space that have
changed overnight. They awaken from a nightmare into an awareness of the
surroundings in which they must live amongst strangers in a place called
Koza Camp, which in real life became “home” for many people. Through
fiction, the story reenacts the true story of the aftermath of the war, which
left one fourth of the prefecture total and one third of the main island of approximately 150,000 (Roberson 2009, 691; Johnson 1999, 16; Molasky 2001,
16) of the Okinawan population dead in less than three months from April 1
to June 22, 1945.4 The remaining Okinawans were captured and imprisoned
in several internment camps throughout the island. Located near what would
become Koza, the Karama internment camp brought together strangers in
the spirit of the common Okinawan expression, icharibe choodee, “when we
meet, we are brothers and sisters.” This sense of kinship also applies to the
Americans, an idea rife with contradiction in light of the continual sexual
violence against the local Okinawan women. The physical structure of bases
is a common sighting of the everyday, and a reminder of the not-so-distant
memory of the war and occupation, living in contradistinction as part of the
psychic and physical landscape of life.
In Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the
Politics of Remembering, Marita Sturken (2009) argues that the social production of national memories of the Vietnam War is constructed by what she
calls “the technologies of memories.” These technologies produce feelings
of nostalgia in cultural products such as public art, memorials, docudramas,
television images, photographs, advertisements, yellow ribbons, red rib-
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bons, alternative media, activist art, and art on bodies. In such a way, spoken
language offers clues, and written text performs the feelings of nostalgia,
while simultaneously performing champurū as a signifyin(g) practice that
tropes on tropes (Gates 1988) where one signifier leads to multiplying others
in a third textual forms of hybrid (Bhabha 2004), curdled (Lugones 2003),
or champuruˉed. These forms are similar to creolization and Sakiyama’s
shimakutuba, and as third text, champurū text represents the history of mixing speech patterns of Okinawan and English to create a series of foreignlocal words such as gibumii (Give me), chokoleeto (Chocolate), and sankyu
(thank you) inserted into the Okinawan Japanese colloquial speech. Many
Okinawans who grew up during the “American era” remember expressions
such as “gibumii chokoleeto” as a language expression used when seeing an
American soldier and asking for sweets, and saying “sankyu” after receiving
some chocolate, chewing gum, or candy. Sturken suggests that chocolate as
an American sign conjures up memories of war and produces nostalgia for
the occupation era in the present. For Okinawa, the nostalgia is an intimate
part of the everyday, weaved into the common and mundane landscape
of life, making it less dramatic or “heavy,” though not forgotten. The past
intermingles with the present, living a champurū sense of life that not only
survives, but also, and more importantly, thrives in champurū formation.
Taco Rice, for example, is a popular dish for tourists, military personnel, and
local Okinawans. While its history is the military occupation, Taco Rice has
become the new champurū dish promoted as “Okinawan Soul Food.” Similarly, the word Engrish (the Japanese/Okinawan pronunciation of English)
is a cultural object of occupation, which holds sensorial memories of sound,
form, and use, made intelligible through the interaction between people and
the exchange of words. Yoshihara’s novel captures the Okinawan-American
champurū zone created through the common use of the mixed-lingual form.
Engrish words such as miruku (milk) and pantsu (underwear)5 offer a space
representing the continuum past to present through an affective quality similar to the technologies of memories of war and occupation. When Kana told
Nao, “my stomach hurts,” Nao responded, “everyone has a stomach ache
when you drink milk for the first time.” Nao comforted her that she will get
used to it, it will get better and diarrhea will stop eventually. And, she told
Kana, “go ahead, put it on. It’s an underwear made from the sheets that we
received as American military rations” (10–11). The words in italics are
written/spoken in foreign katakana form that has crept into Okinawan words/
world that are changing, literally as one speaks in champurū, which is part of
the technology of memory as parts of colloquial speech.
The minutiae of everyday interactions of words and people create the differential experiences of intimacy versus distance. For example, the pronunciation
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of “water” in Japanese is waataa, but in Okinawan it is waaraa, closer to the
American pronunciation, reflecting the proximity and realities of day-to-day
living between Okinawans and Americans. As performative space between
language, sound, and living, the Okinawan pronunciation of American words
evokes both affective quality and effective delivery to direct the Okinawan
readers to their primal scenes of the “first” American contact in an everyday
Okinawan context. These words perform what Giulia Fabi (2001) describes
as the strategy of “double valence” and “strategic bilingualism” of the figure
“passer,” someone who passes, used by early pre-Harlem Renaissance African American writers, which came to be understood as resistance, a subversive act to narrate at the meta-level of the novel, offering multiple modes of
communication in the text that opens up to the reader. “Passer” is homologous to champurū f/actor and text, deployed as a strategy to serve a political
project or decolonial possibility that moves from the literary to literal reading. I suggest that this minute difference in sound as feelings of nostalgia is a
mundane yet critical opening into a third mode of articulation. In this subtle
inter-textual-soundscape of instinct is the bilingualism that opens up to not
only Okinawans, but also to those Americans who lived and interacted with
the local Okinawans. I argue this Okinawan-American soundscape of everyday remains in the memories of Americans as primal scenes of that encounter,
and that Okinawan postwar literature captures, sketches, and archives these
mundane factors in writing Okinawan American champurū stories. While
the “American” element may not be explicit or expressive in all the stories,
the text nonetheless inscribes the “element” depicting the mundane-ness of
everyday life of Okinawa under occupation through the characters, words,
narratives, and “after-text.” It is a writerly style of opening up the space of
continuity between text and life. During my fieldwork, the location of Nakada
Tsuyoshi’s work that will be discussed later, I often hear people jokingly
speak about how Okinawans taught uchinaaguchi (the Okinawan language)
to black soldiers in the Black District, a bar and entertainment district of
Teruya during the occupation, who wanted to “pick up” girls, but taught
those black men the wrong words, who then got shut down by the Okinawan
girls, and laughed together both Okinawans and black men after the joke was
delivered. A former restaurant (no longer in operation, but the building is
still standing in a tattered state) in the district also had a storefront sign that
read “Jōto,” which is uchinaaguchi for “great,” “perfect,” or “right on.” A
few houses down the same street, the faded store front of an old building still
remains with almost faded but still visible sign, “Right On Custom Taylor”
(see photo below), which tells another Okinawan American Champurū history, but in this case, it is an Okinawan Black-American Champurū story.
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Figure 7.1. Teruya, the former Black District, 2012. The building shows the sign over
other signs, “Right On Custom Tailor,” which served both the black men and Okinawan
schoolchildren.
Ariko S. Ikehara.
The Textual Sound of Okinawa
In the middle of the novel, Kana meets and befriends a boy, Aasaa, who is
three years older and lives not in the camp, but nearby. He shows her how to
catch the tanagaa fish in a nearby river, where many fish and water insects
live in a natural habitat of farmlands and wetlands. But the place is ghostly
and disappears and reappears, in between the concrete and asphalt, like the
building with the “Joto” sign. Through their interactions, the author shows
that his childhood has become a site of re/turn (a gift) of history and memory
(treasure): a place with open fields, rivers, and wetlands, insects, plants, and
fish that have Okinawan names spoken in the language of childhood, and a
place of youthful innocence. The place holds an Okinawan space still untouched by the impending disappearance into the construction of internment
camps, military bases, and “American towns.” The friendship takes up the
second half of the story, as the boy becomes Kana’s play brother who tries
to adopt her into his household. This is a reality that many orphans faced in
the aftermath of war where they suddenly found unexpected kinship among
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strangers who became families in the strangest circumstance of life. But his
mother tells him in Kana’s presence that she already has three children to care
for, and that with a scarcity of food, it is not possible to take Kana in. The
mother turns to Kana and says gently, “I am sorry, little Kana.” And Kana
nods. Here the emotion is not negative but expansive, allowing an unspoken
understanding of all three characters that share circumstances. History becomes a site of many re/turns when people who are at first strangers become
family through an unspoken bond created in a dire state of war and militarism.
I argue that this textual space between real and fiction holds memories of not
only Okinawans, but also the Americans in Okinawa whose bodies and stories are already part and parcel of the narratives of war, military, and postwar
life. Furthermore, cultural texts such as literature, photographs, performance,
and objects present the f/actors of America in Okinawa’s champurū text as
f/actors that cannot be erased or ignored, and most importantly, dismissed, in
the colonial construction of “Asian” as essential and eternal; that is to say, the
texts also signify an American f/actor in their multilingual fold. These texts
perform as a living archive that records and holds onto the mixed-lingual-ling
tonality of the American and Japanese f/actors in the textual soundscape of
Okinawan champurū.
The First (but not Last)
In the novel, Kana, the first contact with American military culture is encoded as a painful event that eventually becomes normalized, but leaves
an indelible mark on the body as the first primal site/scene. As mentioned
earlier, the stomach is a contact zone of first site of pain caused by the taste
of milk, a military ration for Okinawans and Americans. While milk in an
American context connotes nutrition and nourishment for babies and adults
for good health, for Asians, it has a different flavor. Though East Asians are
known for their physiological propensity for lactose-intolerance, the milk in
context of American wars and militarism in Asia is often depicted in novels
as a sign of discomfort. Here, milk induces two types of pain: biological and
colonial. Nao, a teenager, who has recovered from her first pain, assures Kana
she too will get used to it. The process of normalization and naturalization of
pain can be understood as a sign of the Americanization process that spreads
out into other areas of life. Many firsts will become common, and rape, for
many young girls and women, is a factor of life.6
For Okinawans, rape becomes a common tragedy of invisibility, a fact of
life that held in the meaning of mundane that gives rise to the critical factor of
life. In other word, life is already critical of life events, such as the common
occurrence of rape as a historical-presence in a dual-colonial spectacle of life.
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This common story is represented in Nao, a 15-year old girl who is gangraped by American military soldiers. This incident invokes the 1995 rape
of a 12-year old girl by three U.S. Marines, which is both the posterior and
anterior to the history of rape. This real-life event awakened the world via social media and the Okinawan women’s movement, which galvanized a transnational movement of many citizens and organizations to critically examine
the impact of the military on women, children, citizen and the environment
around the world. Yoshihara’s novella, depicting the sense of that everyday
space, tells the story as it is happening. Again, fiction and real life, past and
future, meet through Kana, now to show that women’s bodies become sites
of violence under U.S. military culture and sites of critical resistance for life
that literature puts into context beyond the text as an on-going question mark:
does Okinawan LIFE matter?
Okinawa’s American Champurū story witnesses, records, and critiques
the American history and presence, while also creates non-binary, multiple,
and creative worlds/words as possible, thinkable, and available. The making
of words/worlds is what I am arguing is decolonial, which for Okinawans,
is the champurū way of writing, living, expressing, and commenting on life
in the middle of living. The spirit of Nuchi du takara (life is precious/life is
a treasure) lives through this writing, allowing the invisible visible, impossible possible, and unthinkable thinkable to emerge and take shape in one’s
imagination and life. Nakada Tsuyoshi’s short stories exemplify the potential
of champurū text as decolonial whereby “American” recedes into the background while “Okinawan” foregrounds the history of Okinawa’s American
Champurū story. His third is the im/possible figure of an Okinawan black
mixed race female. In both stories, history is not fixed, but an ongoing process of recovery and discovery at the middle of crossing text and life as a
third articulation.
BLACK DISTRICT RED TELEPHONE BOOTH, PAST
APPEARING IN THE FUTURE: A FORMER BAR DISTRICT
As with Sakiyama and Yoshihara, Nakada is a resident of Koza who writes
from his specific location, history, and everyday life of postwar Okinawa.
The author grew up witnessing the black American men/soldiers comingling
with Okinawans, and hearing the sounds and seeing the images of the “mussai mussai” and “taakuwaimukkuwai” of the Black District in his hometown,
Teruya, Koza. The Black District was one of the racially segregated bar and
entertainment areas of Koza district, located inside the Okinawa’s market
street, Honmachi dōri in Teruya. “The Black District Red Telephone Booth”
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is the final story in a three-part compilation of Koza stories told from three
renderings of Koza as Revolution, Okinawan, and Black. I focus on the final
act through the black-Okinawan female protagonist, Eri, who represents an
Okinawan f/actor that resists the master narrative and creates a new Okinawan future, life, and possibility. Her Okinawan-ness, mixed-ness, and
blackness are in a disidentificatory mode, resisting the tragic trope, while
presenting an alternative mode of narrativity and reality of a different life,
which makes her character, a site of champurū text. In this section, I employ
performance art praxis to situate the body at the center in order to explore a
new formation of place, “race,” and space from the middle, the mundane, and
the in-between. Here I illuminate the parallel structure in both Sakiyama’s
“deteriotorizing language” in creating new emergence of knowledge and the
body’s function to deterritorialize the borders of discreet racial and ethnic
markers is both striking and instructive. Both point to the ‘Okinawa,’ which is
still identifiable in shimakutuba and mixed-race/ethnic body. This Okinawa, I
argue again, is the champurū f/actor. But first, I give a brief overview of the
history and literary representation of the Black District for context and reference for Nakada’s story.
Teruya’s Black District was formed during the occupation as a place of
haven functioned as an ethnic enclave for black soldiers who at the time still
experienced racism and segregation in the U.S. and in the military. Before
the Black District was an “all-black territory,” however, Teruya along with
the municipalities at the crossroad were not just for blacks, but served all
soldiers. As all “races” among military personnel were present between 1944
and 1952, the areas along the intersection were not racially segregated. However, according to the city’s archive, part of this “interracial” space, in fact,
had been already segregated prior to 1952, when part of Teruya officially
became the bar and entertainment district, which eventually developed into
the Black District.
By 1952, the bar and entertainment district spread into the adjacent Misato
Village where the military made a simple style barracks as bars in the Misato’s
“Back Street” that became exclusive for the black soldiers. As part of city development, Teruya’s ground was flattened by the bulldozer for constructions that
focused on Honmachi dōri where bars, restaurants and cafes developed to expand the bar and entertainment district in 1954/55. (Koza Bunka Box 3 2007, 62)
It is inferred from the above quote that the informal formation of the ‘Back
Street’ of Misato was a precursor to the formal formation of the Black District
of Teruya that exclusively served blacks. In other words, the Black District
developed as an economic expansion, and not a phenomenon, and often
described as “natural,” “organic,” or unknown. This unknown factor often
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becomes the source of wild imagination and fantasy for writers, filmmakers,
and travelers.
In my analysis of the postwar literature about Koza and the Black District,
I found a set of tropes and images that fix the story in a particular orientation,
point of view, and/or a dominant ideology, thereby limiting the possibilities
of the emergence of the multiple. As described in literary scholar Michale
Molasky’s analysis of Konketsuji (Mixed-blood), a story that takes place in
Teruya, highlights “black” as a negative sign that tropes the father, the mother
and the child:
Narrated from the perspective of the town’s most outcast progeny—children
born of African-American fathers and Okinawan mothers––this story is a melodramatic tragedy of a young man (Kohei) and a woman (Chiyo) who are abandoned by their black fathers, rejected by their Okinawan mothers, and ignored
by the town whose uncontrolled sexuality they embody. (Molasky 2001, 65)
Elucidating the normative reading of anti-miscegenation attributes and attitudes that the term and the title Konketsuji (Mixed-blood) conjure up, the
story reads like a “Black District tragedy” in three acts: the ideologies of
“blackness,” “mixed-ness,” and “Okinawan female-ness” are caught in a
loop, set off by a repetition of the tropes of the tragic, erotic and dramatic.
Furthermore, as Molasky notes, and recalling Bernard Lucious’s concept of
the Black-Pacific, containing a transnational problem to a specific location
fails to capture the broader implication and analysis of the “race.” Thus,
conflating mixed-ness with “hybridity” cannot be achieved in this Okinawablack space as a local issue as it exposes the overlapping issues of “race,”
ethnicity, and nation in a dual-national framework. In the following text,
Molasky’s analysis of the story points to an opening to grapple with the issue
of racism as a universal concern in the context of this history and place.
[The story] raises the difficult issue of Koza’s rejection of those “mixed-blood”
children of African-American fathers who most dramatically represent the
town’s hybrid heritage. . . . The widespread Japanese preference for those of
white/Japanese mixed parentage to black/Japanese, but it exposes the postmodern celebration of hybridity to be irrelevant to whose lives are constrained by
the stigma of “racial impurity.” (65)
The text underpins multiple factors at play the issue of “race” that brings
in Japan, the U.S., and Okinawa into the broader historical context of colonialism as western projects that directly link to the “dramatic and hybrid
heritage” of Teruya. “The tragic, erotic and dramatic” tropes are reproduced
through the Okinawa black mixed female character named Hitomi who is
portrayed as unassimilatable in the contemporary novel Miruku-yu (2012).
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The novel, which takes place mostly in the Black District, is a highly dramatized and stylized story based on real events that took place in Koza during
the occupation. In the novel, the male protagonist gazes upon Hitomi’s body
through the fact of blackness:
Hitomi’s mixed black-blood figure with long hands and feet does not fit with
the look. Her external appearance matches better with Jazz or Blues than the
island folk songs. It brings out the irony and pity, as she is unconscious of the
incongruity. (Hase 2012, 507)
It is the constant gaze that fixes the fact that a particular body (black, mixed,
dark, etc.) is the Other who is also not Asian, Japanese, or here, even Okinawan. It is the sleight of hand of the writerly style that reproduces not only
the image, but also the “fact” of blackness or otherness that fixes in the minds
of the writers and readers. When history is silenced, stories and experts speak
for the “Others” to construct their “facts” and to write characters through
the dramatics of a colonial gaze in the text. Elsewhere I critique the literary
portrayal of black-mixed female characters as excessive and domesticated as
sickly, tragic, and/or unusually “purified,” innocent and conservative, as if to
domesticate the subject/character according to the hypersexual and animalistic impulses that seem to ooze out of the character’s silence. Against the
colonial epistemological fixity of the “death” of these characters, Nakada’s
work provides a champurū model that represents the local, the lived perspective of Teruya, in which the characters are not depicted as overtly dramatized
or traumatized but presented in the mundane voice with a normal amount of
life drama that reflects part of the author’s own reality and life as a resident
of Teruya.
Now I turn to the work of Nakada Tsuyoshi, The Koza Revolution. In
2010, Nakada submitted the novella in the Koza Literary competition for a
literary prize, but was not awarded. Subsequently, he published it an online
book publishing website called wook until February 28, 2017 when the site
was closed and changed under the new book publishing site called Beyond
Publishing.7 While the literature is no longer available online, Nakada’s story
is a living archive of the Black District history and legacy written by a Koza
resident who witnessed and lived the era as a child. The story beyond its
textual form has another life of performance art wherein Nakada performs
as a one-man show for the local Teruyan residents in a homemade theater
space in one of the closed down shopping areas in Teruya, alluding to the
theater tradition of the past and the location of Sakiyama’s theater district in
the Solitary Island Dream Soliloquy. He plays the grandmother and retells
the story in three parts, spacing out the dates of unscheduled performances.
Nakada is an active member of the community who was a long-time union
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leader of Teruya merchants’ association, a youth leader, and is a scriptwriter,
a performer, and a writer who maintains his activities within the confines of
the everyday life of Teruya. From this mundane space, Nakada’s writing offers decolonial possibility, breaking the conventional narrativity of the Black
District, and employing the voice of the unspectacular and the local Teruyan
life of negotiating the paradox. Nakada’s story overturns and overcomes the
impossible by reconfiguring, in part and multiple, Teruya’s Black American
story of the Black District as an Okinawan story. Although it is fiction, the
story is based on Nakada’s experience as a Teruyan child of Honmachi Street
who grew up during the Black District era. The novella is titled, Koza Revolution, and divided into three acts: “Koza Revolution,” “Koza, the Honmachi
doori, the Black District,” and “The Black District’s Red Telephone Booth.”
The story depicts the former American city, Koza, in Teruya’s Black District
that takes us through the history of U.S. military occupation, the incident of
the Koza Uprising (December 20, 1970), and the life of Koza as an American
city through two protagonists, a grandmother and her granddaughter who is
a mixed black-Okinawan female character named Eri. There is a performative line between text and life as Nakada’s work explores his own personal
struggles of coming to terms with the past of war, military occupation, and his
internal “racism” toward his hometown, The Black District. Unlike the mainstream literature, Nakada’s writing shows people as champurū f/actors who
neither reject nor accept their lives, but cope with and negotiate the mundane
in making life possible for everyone in the back of those who suffered and
sacrificed in order that others can live against the odds. This coping is not
necessarily a struggle caught in a tragedy, but a sign of life in full awareness
of the present of war and the aftermath.
In his work, the ready-made function of the tragic trope of a black-Okinawan female character like Hitomi and others does not take over the story.
Rather the trope works in and through the intimate dialogue that weaves
Eri’s relationship to her grandmother and the place. Each discrete but interconnected act develops the story into three compositional acts, depicting
Eri’s “black, abandoned, mixed” fact as not tragic, but mundane. In the story,
Eri is introduced from the second act as a child raised by her grandmother,
and it takes a phenomenal turn in the third act when she becomes a mayoral
candidate for Koza. There is a specter of tragedy in Eri’s story, as we learn
that her father is absent, mother is not capable of raising her, and the neighborhood kids call her “blackie.” But the story exceeds the trope by giving
her a “normal” Okinawan life of challenge and chance because of her grandmother’s attitude and action that defuses the stigma of Eri’s “blackness” and/
or “mixed-ness” as not fixed but possibility in the Okinawan postwar context.
Eri is raised like a normal Okinawan child without silencing the fact of life/
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blackness that, in fact, makes her Okinawan-ness come alive as a child of
postwar Okinawa. In a scene where grandmother Chiyo is trying to convince
her daughter (Eri’s mother) to give up waiting for her boyfriend (Eri’s father),
the grandmother turns her attention to Eri:
But, Eri has not committed any sin, you understand.
She’s black but, a cute kid.
[Turning to baby Eri] Yes, yes, come to grandma.
Yes, yes, let’s play with grandma. Come on, come on (49)
This intimate portrait of family affair is not part of the common story of the
Black District, yet for Teruyans and people living along the Koza Crossroad,
this is the reality of the occupation. Eri’s “blackness” is a common fact and
sight of life, not only for Eri’s family, but also for everyone she encounters
in Teurya, Koza, and Okinawa where in real life, figures like Eri were common fact and mundane sight for Okinawans. This mundane Okinawa depicted
through Eri’s character defies the fixity of both the narrative and the character of black-Okinawan female as tragic. She resists the master narrative by
not only surviving in the story, but also thriving as one who holds the key
to the future of Teruya and Koza. She thereby challenges the common assumptions and unexamined “facts” about Teruya’s Black District in both the
literature and the mainstream societies. Although the story moves quickly
from Eri’s uncertain future to the shining moment of becoming a mayoral
candidate, the narrative, nonetheless, escapes the tropes of the eroto-tragedy
(erotic and tragic) by turning the unthinkable into reality. In real life, a lack
of representation of black-Okinawan female characters as heroines or positive role models begets a bleak past, present, and future for the possibility of
making a difference in the lives of Teruyans. In her speech as Koza’s first
black-Okinawan mayoral candidate, Eri honors her grandmother through all
the grandmothers who lost EVERY thing: having lost the experience to be
young and hopeful, enduring hardships during the war, and continue working
for others’ future after the war. Furthermore, these diverse experiences of the
grandmothers in the intimacy of Okinawa’s postwar life are often faded in the
background or not available in mainstream text or societies. Writers of Koza
fiction who are outsiders often choose to write in a spectacular style to show
the spectacles of people, place, and space of Teurya, Koza, and Okinawa
in order to capture mainstream readership. The grandmothers’ connection
with daughters and granddaughters, for example, are lost in the interracial
and miscegenation drama and stigmata affecting both the novels and real
life stories, yoking the structures of society and narrative into one common
story and fact of blackness, mixed-ness, and Okinawan-ness. Yet, in spite of
the challenge of being “black,” Chiyo, her grandmother brings her up to be
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a strong person, a survivor. And in spite of the obaas (grandmothers’) hardships, Eri reflects in her candidacy speech, “[They taught me] ‘Not to forget
kindness.’ ‘To be kind hearted towards others.’ They still raised someone
like me” (Nakada 2010, 92–94). Then Eri asks the audience, “40 years after
the Koza Uprising, have we progressed where a person can live as a person,”
challenging them further, “what do we REALLY want?” (98). “Let’s change.
People. Let’s change. Please let’s make it right and cast one vote for the first
black-Okinawan mayor!” (99).
Nakada’s writing about Eri, though not fully developed, deserves attention
for radical turn of the story that challenges the historical accounts and literary and social representation of the most unlikely figure, a black-Okinawan
female who not only survives in the story, but thrives as not a superhero, but
as a Teruyan who is given a chance to live in the mundane and to run for a
mayor. He sets the narrative against the grain of teleological structure of the
master narrative, but also breaks the epistemological block of the colonial
logic and mind that cannot and unwilling to see the possibility of certain racialized and gendered figures in certain roles in a story or a real life. Nakada
creates a champurū effect through his writing that does not foreclose history
or story, but rather mixes and multiplies the story toward possibility, incorporating history, reality, and emergence of the champurū f/actor of the mundane. It is manifested through Eri’s life that lives in the story as if to make it
possible, believable, and thinkable the question, “Have we come to a place
where a person can live like a person?” in real life. The story ends with Eri’s
last line that echoes beyond the text and words in asking “Please let’s make it
right and cast one vote for the first black-Okinawan mayor!” What does she
mean by “make it right” and what does it mean to elect “someone like me”?
Who is able to hear in between the text and life, the past and the present, the
American and the Okinawan, and the one in many in between(s)? Next, I attempt to touch on some of these questions.
The part five, which is the finale, begins with Eri who is now 41 years old
and running for a mayor of Koza city. The whole section is devoted to her
mayoral speech, as mentioned above, focusing on the theme of “change,”
challenging people to envision and take a stand for a better future by asking,
what do we really want? Below is the last part of her speech:
It has been 40 years since the Koza Uprising.
Has the world changed where “people can live as people?” (109)
Is Okinawa better now? What have we gained and lost? What has changed,
and what has not? (110)
What was it that we went after? Are we okay as is? What was it that we really
wanted? What was it? (111)
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Do you have in your hand what you wished for? What is it that we really
desire? (112)
What is it that you all really desire? Everyone, this is a challenge. Let’s
change it. Let’s challenge ourselves (113)
Please cast your honest vote to the first black mayor for the Okinawa City!
(The song, “What is it you wish for” by Okubayashi is playing) (114)
In both the speech and the song, a sense of something new is on the horizon
that is made palpable through the overlapping calls of “what do we want,”
“what do we desire,” “what do we wish for” that culminate at the end of the
story in multiple formation. I look at how the novel ends as a champurū space
in order to arrive at the author’s intention in placing Eri’s speech at the end of
the Koza trilogy with this particular song, which is playing in the background
and metaphorically, continues to play off the text. Below are the first and the
last verses of the song:
What we wish for is
Not the pain of living.
What we wish for is
The joy of living.
...
We cannot be stopped by the misfortune of today.
We go after now for the happiness that we have yet to see.
What do we wish for?8
The song is a protest song written by a Japanese folk singer, Okabayashi
Nobuyasu, who is one of many songwriters and folk singers that wrote
protest songs against war, deaths and destruction of humanity. The song,
released in 1970 as a single 45 vinyl and with other side titled “Sexual and
Cultural Revolution,” underscores the zeitgeist of the time, reflective of the
world where politics and personal interlocked. The overlapping of time and
space of both is uncanny in the double playing of the message of the 1970
that challenges people to wake up, imploring them to ask themselves, what
has not changed and what and how could we imagine the unforeseen change
that has yet to come? It is the call-and-response thrust in both scenarios that
calls out to the audience/world, the listener and the reader, waiting for their
responses. While the question has yet to be answered, the hope, which is
held in the space between question and answer, waits for a better future for
Okinawa, Japan, and the world. It produces an uncomfortable feeling of unresolved matter, haunted feeling, or structured feeling of champurū for those
who are living and/or witnessing the reality of Koza city and by extension
Okinawa today that is still in waiting for a better future. Since the reversion,
the city’s multiple attempts to recover economically from the aftermath of
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145
war, the presence of the U.S. military, and the economic and political oppression by the Japanese government have yet to pay off in good terms.
However, the spirit of Kozans keep making those attempts to revive the
economy by appropriating its own history into a unique champurū symbol of
multicultural celebration as key to success while waiting in the hope for the
change that is yet to come. Against the odds in both the story and real life,
Eri, like Okinawans, not only survives, but also thrives in the everyday the
uncertainties of the future; and moreover, she/Okinawan f/actor is the future
that people have yet to see as the first black-Okinawan mayor who holds the
key to Koza city’s economic recovery in the story, and, it would be so, in real
life. Here, she is not the Other, but one who is included in the “we” in both
cases without the exceptional or unusual marking of her character to make it
into an unusually exceptional or spectacular figure. She speaks and looks like
the one who has been brought up in that place, space, and time of history of
Okinawa as neither America nor Japan. She, an Okinawan champurū f/actor,
is no longer subjugated by the master’s hand that mutes her voice and reconfigures her into an effigy of someone else’s literary and literal imagination.
The author gives her an impossible story that in turn gives a possibility of
bright life as the novel ends with a high hope in Eri’s last words, followed by
a stage direction (With a Bright Smile). I suggest this unusual storyline can be
defined as a champurū moment that arises through the text into the reader’s
visual cue in signaling that something else is waiting, lingering, or escaping
through the space between text and life. This waiting reminds me of a literary
strategy that Trinh Minh-Ha presents in her chapter that discusses about The
Debt of Love in Vietnamese story, and that the hope is “always kept alive in
the tale—hope, and not expectation, . . . through the forces that exceed the
lifetime of an individual, that people who knew the lore of survival seek to
solve difficult situations and social inequity” (2011, 17). Trinh’s hope in the
tale is the possibility that I read in Nakada’s story that offers the waiting as
a suspended space that opens up a third context for possibility that redirects
the reader to see that what seems to be a closure at the end of the story is
actually a reopening of a historical turn against the closure of an incomplete
history. It is precisely the meaning that Trinh gives: “hope is kept alive in the
tale” (17) that allows the gesture of opening and reopening to be a possibility.
A subtext of the last line lets a reader know, it is not the end of the line or
story. I suggest that this residual space of waiting is that smile that leaps off
the page, re/turns the gaze upon a reader in meeting “I to an eye” exchange,
thereby shattering the fixed image of the impossible subject on/off text, and
disrupting the master narrative that maintains power and controls the Other.
The reader could very well have missed the play between sign and signifier: bright/possible, smile/hope, but nonetheless a reader reads the textual
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representation of the one who is smiling bright at the end. The smile brightens
up (possibility and hope) the story of Eri who has broken the image of the
impossible subject. In the end, the Other transfigures into an active figure, the
champurū f/actor, that speaks/writes on behalf of itself in multiple, swinging
the pendulum back and forth where the invisible becomes visible, the impossible becomes possible, and the colonial becomes decolonial.
CONCLUSION: A METHODOLOGY OF DIASPORA:
BODY AS INTERLOCUTIONARY TEXT/ACT
Decolonial possibility is a daring act of hope: it is the audacity to hope for
something new.
This chapter offers a methodological intervention in the academies to disrupt the ideas of impossibility inherent in the Western “binary” thinking that
creates geo-political “borders” and cultural and language “barriers” of Asia
and Asian languages, limiting other epistemological possibilities to flourish
and integrate into the vast fields of knowledge. The methodology reconsiders Asia and Asian languages as an integral site for producing decolonial
knowledge and praxis predicated upon the broader mission and tradition
of the ethnic studies project. It is a big leap of faith to reframe Asia in a
non-traditional-Asian-centric lens. Yet this new insight offers a fruitful and
generative site for research that reaches across ocean, making it possible and
visible the necessity of this meeting and merging at the X as intersectional.
Informed by the U.S. Women of Color concept of the intersectionality, the X
requires us to think, link, and work transnationally in cross-disciplinary fields
of Okinawa studies, Japan studies, American studies, black studies, gender
studies, critical race studies, decolonial studies, ethnic studies and more.
This approach could be defined as a transnational and translational comparative ethnic studies methodology that is intrinsically diasporic. Diasporic
champurū writing triples and ripples in between and beyond national borders,
forging an in-between way of being in the world, academically or otherwise,
and speaking the language of third that aligns and travels in contrapuntal
movement with Trinh’s refugeeism Anzaldúa’s “new mestiza,” Sakiyama’s
shimakutuba, and others whose thinking, writing, body, and knowledge are
created at various sites of X.
NOTES
1. In this article, all translations from the Japanese are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.
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147
2. Sakiyama is an Okinawan female writer, born in 1954 in Irimote, Okinawa. She
moved to Koza (now Okinawa City) at fourteen and thereafter graduated from the
University of the Ryukyus, the first university in Okinawa that established during the
U.S. occupation. She began her publishing career in 1979 and started her literary career in 1988 (The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 2016: 1). Also, she has received
honorable mention for the New Okinawan Literature award in 1979, received the
Kyushu Arts literary award in 1988, and was nominated for Japan’s most prestigious
Akutagawa Prize in 1989 and 1990.
3. Yomitan Sonshi Henshū Īnkai. 2004
4. The total numbers of deaths are much higher with additional 50,000 deaths
including Japanese Imperial Army and the U.S. military soldiers.
5. In American English, “pants” means trousers, and in British English, it means
underpants. I am tracking the “sound of Okinawa” in these foreign words, not necessarily the root.
6. On March 13, 2016, an allegation of the rape of an Okinawan woman by American military personnel was reported by USA Today. On June 23, 2016, Okinawa’s
Day to Remember the Dead, Okinawa mourns for a 20-year old woman who was
raped, strangled, and murdered by an ex-marine American residing in Okinawa. Her
body was found on May 15, 2016.
7. The original site, wook, closed and is now under a new site called Beyond Publishing since February 28, 2017. With this change, the original content is no longer
available, and the content and objective of the new site is significantly different from
the original site. While wook offered a literary work of Koza, the new site has no such
genre. I was able to get the text from the original site when it was still in operation
and have a hard copy on hand for reference.
8. “Watashitachi no nozomumono” in http://nvc.halsnet.com/jhattori/green-net/
Okabayashi/WatashitachinoNozomumono.htm. Accessed July 5, 2017.
Chapter Eight
The Black Pacific
Through Okinawan Eyes
Photographer Mao Ishikawa’s “Hot Days in
Camp Hansen!!” and “Life in Philly”
Laura Kina
Since the reversion of Okinawa from the U.S. to Japan in 1972, documentary
photographer Mao Ishikawa1 has chronicled the gritty underbelly of Okinawa, Japan. Her work examines the intertwined post-World War II history
of Japanese and American militarization and the lives of Okinawans working
in peripheral industries. She first gained notoriety with her 1975–1977 “Hot
Days in Camp Hansen!!” series, which features Okinawan and Japanese
mainland hostesses fraternizing with African American servicemen.2 This
chapter compares and contrasts this early controversial work with her 1987
“Life in Philly” series. In “Life in Philly,” Ishikawa follows U.S. Army private Myron Carr back to his native Philadelphia, after having met him in 1975
in the Teruya bar district in Koza City (now called Okinawa City). Shot in
black and white, yet offering neither a black nor white perspective on inner
city African American life, Ishikawa’s photographs walk “fence lines” of
desire and present her Okinawan perspective of the Black Pacific.3 What follows is an examination of the transnational framing of Okinawan and African
American bodies, whose identities and experiences have been constituted by
the American militarization of spaces in both Japan and the United States.4
I first met Mao Ishikawa and her former manager Naoko Uchima in June
of 2012 at a coffee shop in Naha just as the rainy season ended and the rising
summer sun steamed up the streets. Ishikawa was wearing a yellow, orange,
and black aloha print shirt that matched the streaks in her bleached curly
hair. She greeted me with initial apprehension. I overheard her ask Uchima in
Japanese if I was a white gaijin (foreigner). Uchima reassured her that I was
an Uchinānchu (Okinawan) “Amerikan” hāfu (my father is Okinawan from
Hawaiʻi and my mother is white), and that I was also an artist. Her face relaxed and she seemed to recognize my ambiguous “Asianness” as Okinawan.
I sensed she could place my story in Okinawa’s pre-World War II history of
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mass labor migration to the Americas that followed the poverty and famine
from the crash of Okinawa’s sugar farming industry. Or alternatively, she
may have placed me in the postwar legacy of the U.S. military occupation
of Okinawa and the appearance of Amerasians—Ishikawa had photographed
interacial couples and their Amerasian children in her 2005 “Marriage with
a GI” photographs for her book Fences, Okinawa (Ishikawa 2010, 102–109).
She spoke directly to me in English, “Can you understand me? I speak bad
English that I learned from black men in bars.” Ishikawa gave a big laugh and
showed me her work.5
Mao Ishikawa’s photos have exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in Okinawa and Tokyo and she is considered one of Okinawa’s most important living artists, but aside from her inclusion in The Perpetual Moment:
Visions within Okinawa and Korea at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New
York in 2004, her works are not yet widely known in the United States.6 Her
photographs have primarily circulated through Japanese photobooks such
as Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!! (1982); A Port Town Elegy (1990/2015);
Sachiko Nakada’s Theater Company (1991); Okinawa Soul (2002); Life in
Philly (2009); Fences, Okinawa (2010); Here’s What the Japanese Flag
Means to Me (2011); Hot Days in Okinawa (2013); and Morika’s Dream
(2014). The Japanese photobook is a distinct genre in which images, text and
book design come together as an artwork in its own right.7
As we sat in the shadows of a nearby shopping mall in what used to be
the formly independent Ryukyu Kingdom’s port city, in what had turned into
a battleground during World War II, and was now a thriving city center, I
flipped through her archives and was drawn in by the romance of hand processed and printed 35 mm black and white photographs.8 The physicality of
the analog photos, even in reproduction, stands out in our digital moment. She
had recently completed her Fences, Okinawa project when we met, in which
she walked and photographed the entire perimeter of the U.S. military bases
of Okinawa from the South to the North. The book opens with an image of
children standing on a coral reef at the water’s edge as they photograph a passenger airplane approaching a nearby base landing strip. In the next image,
a hand painted school zone sign featuring American and Japanese national
flags lies on the ground in front of an all too familiar running chainlink fence
topped with three strands of barbed wire slanted inwards to keep the civilian
population out of the bases. This is juxtaposed next to a grainy image of a
sky filled with outbound Chinook transport helicopters. With 74 percent of
the bases in Japan still located in Okinawa and nearly 20 percent of the total
landmass of Okinawa taken up by U.S. military bases, Mao Ishikawa documents the comings, goings and transnational circulations of U.S. soldiers and
their impact on Okinawans.
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151
The US Marines are trained and based in Okinawa, South Korea, Australia,
Guam, and the Philippines. They drink and talk a lot while they are in Okinawa,
and then they will be sent to Afghanistan . . . US soldiers move from Okinawa
to many places in the world to fight, which Okinawan people sometimes do not
realize. I take photos of the young soldiers regardless (Ishikawa 2010, 3).
She first began photographing U.S. soldiers in Okinawa at the close of the
Vietnam War when she was just twenty-one years old. The only child of a
customs worker and full time mother, Mao Ishikawa was born in 1953 and
grew up in the rural northern Okinawan village of Ōgimi and currently lives
and works in the south in Tomigusuku City, Okinawa.
Ishikawa became a photographer “. . . because I was born in Okinawa. I
wanted to take photos of the military bases . . . focusing on Okinawa in relation with the US military bases and US soldiers (Ishikawa 2010, 5).” How exactly she became politically mobilized at the age of eighteen is an important
key to understanding her career as a photographer. On November 10, 1971,
when she was in her third year in high school and just becoming involved in
an amateur photography club, she witnessed the infamous death of an Okinawan riot policemen who was killed by a Molotov cocktail thrown by an
Okinawan demonstrator. This so-called “Matsunago Incident” happened in
the midst of a Naha City rally by over 100,000 Okinawans who were expressing dissatisfaction against the June 17, 1971 Okinawa Reversion Agreement
that Ishikawa described as admitting “the maintenance of the U.S. bases and
the deployment of the Self Defense Forces in Okinawa [Ryukyu Islands and
the Daito Islands]. . . . I was in the demonstrators and saw a Ryukyu riot
policeman lying paralyzed before me. Smoke was going up in the air like
volcanic fume and I knew he got killed. His fellow riot policemen were frozen onto the spot.” When the moment of shock passed, the riot police began
to violently retaliate against the demonstrators. Ishikawa recalls, “I ran along
the roofs of houses as hard as I could. While running, I vomited and tears and
snot were mixed up” (Ishikawa 2010, 146). She decided then and there that,
“I will photograph Okinawa, the islands fired with anger! I’m going to be a
photographer!”9 Taro Amano, Curator in Chief of Yokohama Art Museum,
noted that as a result of witnessing this riot she “became deeply skeptical of
the reversion campaign that caused some to take a human life–often without
regard to their political views. And she became firmly determined to take
photos of Okinawa, a place filled with political contradictions.”10
HOT DAYS IN CAMP HANSEN!!!
Following the reversion of Okinawa from the U.S. to Japan on May 15, 1972,
this newfound passion for photography and purpose led her to travel to Tokyo
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in 1974 where she enrolled in Shōmei Tōmatsu’s class at the Workshop
School of Photography where she came into contact with some of the most
influential Japanese postwar photographers, including Nobuyoshi Araki,
Masahisa Fukase, and Daido Moriyama. She returned to Okinawa shortly
thereafter and began shooting “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” (1975–1977). “I
came up with the idea of taking photos of soldiers while working as a barmaid
in a ‘for US soldiers only’ joint [sic]. I did not speak any English then, but I
thrust myself into a bar for black soldiers and began to take photos of soldiers
and both Okinawan and Japanese barmaids” (Ishikawa 2010, 5).
As would become a trademark of her documentary work, Ishikawa got up
close and personal with her subjects, embedding herself in environments and
blurring the borders between art, ethnography, and visual diary—a methodology of alterity art critic Hal Foster would observe a decade later in the
Anglo-West as being a paradigm of “the artist as ethnographer,” in which the
artist struggles in the name of “the cultural and/or ethnic other” (Foster 1996,
302–309). Her former teacher Shōmei Tōmatsu praised her up-close method
as a highly personal and subjective form of “new journalism.”11 A largely
self-taught photographer, Ishikawa claims to be unconcerned with such academic photographic discussions. Her lens remains focused on the everyday
lives of soldiers and Okinawans. In “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!,” street
nightlife, bar, and party scenes are juxtaposed with images of Okinawan
women and their African American boyfriends hanging out at the beach, or
with images of the former soldiers with their Amerasian children. The woman
are seen passing the morning and early afternoon hours watching TV, cooking, visiting and smoking in the kitchen, or drinking together until the early
evening. We see them putting on makeup and getting ready for work in the
bar. Ishikawa shows us the women as friends, lovers, mothers, and as happy
couples and even as wives. But she also shows us a darker side. In one image
an older Okinawan woman, perhaps the bar owner, wears an African dashiki
as she is seen sleeping in bed cradling a 74 proof bottle of Suntory whiskey.
Her nose is deeply scarred from stitches that run across the bridge of her nose
and speak to a history of violence.
By documenting “everyday” lives—as transnational feminist Cynthia Enloe points out, these “everyday” lives that may seem “unimportant,” “trivial,”
or “private”—Ishikawa is pushing back against the militarized and touristoriented imperialist gaze of the U.S. and mainland Japan (Enloe 2007, 137).
Her photographs of Afro-Asian connections point to what scholar Bernard
Scott Lucious described as the “Black Pacific.” They index a “spatio-temporal site beyond the Atlantic that is not exclusively African American nor
Asian American, African diasporic nor Asian diasporic, but is all of these at
once” (Lucious 2005, 122).
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153
Figure 8.1. Cover image of Hot Days in Okinawa (circa 1975–1977). Published in
2013 by Foil.
Courtesy of Mao Ishikawa.
This interstitial Black Pacific world can be glimpsed in the 1970s-cover
image of Ishikawa’s 2013 Hot Days in Okinawa. Three off duty African
American U.S. servicemen lounge in bed with two Okinawan bar hostesses as
sunlight from a nearby window highlights their faces and contours in a plume
of cigarette smoke. One couple holds hands. What are we looking at? Is this
an intimate group of friends hanging out? Or is it something else? The visual
ambiguity of the photo, the agency Ishikawa possessed, and her resistance
to portraying her subjects as victims rubs up against Okinawa’s history of
subjugation—both in terms of the military occupation of land and in terms of
sexualized violence against women by American agents of empire—serves to
complicate this otherwise tender scene. As Ayako Takamori argues in chapter
6 of this book, “sexual relationships between Okinawan women and American men are interpreted within the context of defeat and military occupation
(as spoils of war) and of economic survival.”
When Mao Ishikawa began shooting “Hot Days,” the Vietnam War was
drawing to a close but America’s use of Okinawa as a strategic “Keystone
of the Pacific” had been cemented during the Cold War. Located in northern
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Okinawa in Kin Town, Camp Hansen has been a United States Marine
Corps base where recruits have trained in live fire artillery drills and combat
since the 1950s. It is within this context that the sexual and racial politics of
Ishikawa’s work must be considered.
Scholar Linda Isako Angst notes that for many young American recruits,
“the tour of duty on Okinawa is their first time abroad-indeed, the first time
many of them have ever been away from their hometowns.” While they may
have hoped to “see the world,” they frequently find their lives confined “to
the narrow world (and world view) of the base and the bars and brothels in
its immediate periphery” (Isako Angst 2003, 136–137). These entertainment
districts, which also include legitimate businesses and lively music scenes,
are an infamous part of the unofficial R&R (rest and recuperation) culture
in Okinawa and lay bare a problematic legacy of forced militarized prostitution at the former Japanese “comfort” stations of World War II.12 After the
war ended, “Japan created the Recreation and Amusement Association for
U.S. troops to engage in prostitution. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who administered Japan during the postwar occupation, ended the association after
four months in 1946.”13 “Following the Korean war,” writes scholar Miyume
Tanji, “sexual assaults of women and girls by US soldiers and officers was
common” so some Okinawans came to support “special catering districts”
(tokushu inshoku gai) in places like Koza or Kin Town, “designed for US
military clientele . . . to create a ‘sexual breakwater,’ aimed at protecting
‘normal citizens’ from the potential danger of sexual violence” (Tanji 2006,
80). While officially illegal since 1956 in Japan and certainly off-limits to
U.S. troops who would technically be subject to court-martial, by the late
1960s, according to the U.S. based non-profit Women for Genuine Security,
as many as 10,000 Okinawan women were “coerced into prostitution through
economic hardship” with “one in thirty . . . employed as prostituted women
for the U.S. military in A-sign bars [The “A” meaning “Approved” for military patronage].”14 Ishikawa counters that it is a stereotype to assume that “all
women working at base towns are selling their bodies” and she stressed her
own agency and that of her subjects in an anti-colonial narrative. “I pictured
their open and lively way of living, their dignified sights, without hesitation
to the stereotyping eyes, unlike many other people on this small island who
try to live carefully under the eyes of the others. I started to love those women
who just didn’t give a damn about working at bars for black soldiers. I loved
their majestic attitude.”15
In her analysis of the infamous 1995 gang rape by three U.S. servicemen
of a twelve-year-old Okinawan school girl and the specific power and gendered dynamics of Camp Hansen, scholar Linda Isako Angst cautions that
their geographic isolation from the general population, their low salaries, and
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155
the nature of their work which is “intensely fixated on their own physicality”
are factors that “contribute to producing a situation in which an occupation
army of restless young, foreign men who have received little preparation for
understanding Okinawan society constitute a clear and present danger to the
local community, especially its women and girls” (Hein and Selden 2003,
136–137). This sense of danger has been exacerbated by the post-reversion
U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which set legal guidelines
for U.S. military personnel. Because the agreement put military personnel
who have committed crimes while off duty into U.S. custody rather than Japanese police custody, regardless of the severity of the crime, it is perceived
as allowing soldiers to be above the law, or at least outside of the reach of
Okinawan or Japanese legal repercussions.
Ishikawa’s dignified view of her former co-workers runs counter to the dismissive history of downplaying situations where bar hostesses and prostituted
women have been victims of violence (Tanji 2006, 103).16 In stark contrast,
when victims have been children and young women who are viewed as innocent, their violation symbolically comes to stand in for the subjugation of
Okinawa as the body politic and has led to mass media coverage, outrage,
and protests against U.S. military bases (Tanji 2006, 159).17 A recent example
is from a June 19, 2016 demonstration where according to the organizers
approximately 60,000 Okinawans gathered to protest against U.S. military
bases after the gruesome rape and murder of a 20-year old Okinawan woman
by a U.S. contract worker at Kadena Air Force Base.18 In the case of everyday
violence against female bar workers or prostitutes, however, the widespread
outrage that has characterized these other cases is often muted or silenced, in
a way that “blames the victim.”
The adjective of “hot” in “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” thus might allude
not only to the tropical climate of Okinawa and the intimate subject matter
of the series, but also to the “hotness” and potentially explosive dynamics
of race, gender, and military occupation. Ishikawa reflected on her motivation and strategy for capturing this post-reversion era, “I will take photos of
people who live on this island full of the U.S. military. The U.S. military
equals the U.S. personnel. How can I take photos of them? Yes, I will work
as a hostess at a foreigner’s bar. Yes, that is the quick way.”19
Artist and curator Ayelet Zohar has described the series as bravely displaying,
. . . forbidden relationships between the local girls, experiencing the poverty and
isolation of their location, befriending the American G.I.s who, on one hand,
signaled the far away, powerful and the exotic world of America, and yet, were
often themselves victims of the American system. Many of the men involved
in the photographs came from poverty stricken areas, faced social and financial
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barriers, and used their military service as a launching pad to a better life in the
US.20
Zohar’s assessment of the financial situation of the men Ishikawa photographed aptly applies to the African American subjects in her Life in Philly
series, which will be discussed later in this chapter.
In the 1970s, these entertainment districts surrounding the U.S. military
bases in Okinawa were racially segregated, and fights between white and
Black GIs defending their territory were common. In one of the most prominent districts just outside of Kadena Air Force Base Gate 2 in Koza, the white
soldiers would congregate around the Goya entertainment district, along BC
Street and Gate 2 Street, and the Black soldiers formed their own district,
Teruya, also known as Four Corners, near Koza Crossing.21 Americans nicknamed such Black districts “the Bush,” and Okinawans called them Mokutangai or “Charcoal Town” (Ueunten 2010, 112).22 These entertainment districts
carry with them complicated histories of sexual, racial and ethnic subjugation
entwined with military and financial relationships between the U.S., Japan,
and Okinawa. To the north of Koza and Kadena A.F.B. is the aforementioned
Camp Hansen Marine Corps Base and the adjacent town of Kin. Ishikawa
photographed candid shots of “love between Black servicemen and Japanese
girls in Okinawa” in both Koza and Kin Town.23
She debuted the series in her 1977 show “Women of Kin Town” at Minolta
Photo Space in Tokyo with little controversy. But when she first published
the works as a photobook called Hot Days in Hansen!! in 1982—which included images that she herself appears in, taken by fellow Okinawan photographer Toyomitsu Higa—it was met by a flurry of negative media publicity.24
The cover features a tame shot of six topless hostesses at the beach as an incoming wave takes them by surprise but the original interior photos were not
just of the women but of emotional and physical intimacies with or for Black
servicemen. Curator Taro Amano has written about the reaction,
The women in the photos had started a new life and objected to the raw, naked
portrayal of life at that time. Ishikawa’s husband, whom she married in 1978,
also objected to the publication with a vengeance [he had known about the
photographs and Ishikawa’s past when they married]. Her decision to publish
the book, in spite of these objections, resulted in Ishikawa with her two-year-old
daughter leaving her husband.25
When her fellow hostesses knew her as a peer, Ishikawa says they consented
to being photographed. While it is unclear if they knew the photographs were
intended for distribution as “art” rather than for a personal archive, their
staged postures and direct gaze indicate a reciprocal pleasure in being looked
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes
157
Figure 8.2. Cover image of Hot Days in Camp Hansen!! (circa 1975–1977). Published
in 1982 by Aaman Shuppan.
Courtesy of Mao Ishikawa.
at as objects of desire and mirror their active role in the documentation of
their exhibitionism.26 Ishikawa celebrates a “sex positive” empowered female
vision, although I suspect her gaze and her subjects’ performances were primarily intended for a male heterosexual audience. However, we might also
consider Freud’s concept of scopophilia (looking as a source of pleasure)
and its narcissistic aspect famously described by Laura Mulvey in relation to
cinema where “curiosity and the wish to look intermingle with a fascination
with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the
person in the world” (Mulvey 1975, 17).
As Ishikawa’s contemporary feminist and critic Susan Sontag noted, photographs “help people take possession of space in which they are insecure,”
and this might have also been the case when Ishikawa first became a hostess
but, Sontag continues, photographs also “furnish evidence” (Sontag 1973,
5, 9). This later position is what some of Ishikawa’s subjects came to take.
While the women did not protest the 1977 exhibition, when the book was
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published in 1982 some of her friends “did not want to bother” their husbands
and families with their past. Respecting their wishes for privacy, Ishikawa
gave the original negatives to the women. Before the book was publicly
distributed, she manually cut out six pages from the book that the women
deemed especially problematic.27 Her father, however, secretly kept some of
the original prints, recognizing perhaps that the photographs had historic and
artistic importance for his daughter. In 2011 in a cabinet shelf unopened for
30 years, Ishikawa’s daughter discovered the photos and gave them to her
mother on New Year’s Eve. Ishikawa burst into tears and thanked her father.28
When she made the decision to publicly show “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!”
in 2012, Ishikawa clarified her original intentions for this work,29
This is not an infiltration report. I did not intend to take “sneak peek photos”
on the sidelines. I am neither a magazine photographer nor a photojournalist. I
started taking photos by involving myself in the situation. It is not only a documentary but also my own emotional record. So working at a bar for African
American personnel is important for me. I decided to become a lady in Kin
Town. (Ishikawa 2013, 148)
Ishikawa thus identified with the hostesses and sought to capture their daily
life in Okinawa while creating an alliance with African Americans. In her
photographs, which were subsequently republished by Foil Co., Ltd. in a book
titled Hot Days in Okinawa in 2013, the hostesses sport big hoop-earrings,
wedge platform shoes, mini-skirts and bell-bottoms and permed hair styled
into “natural” Afros which allude to the iconic symbol of Black pride popularized by members of the Black Panther Party or by actress Pam Grier in the
Blaxploitation hit Foxy Brown (directed by Jack Hill in 1974).30 Ishikawa desired to transgress racial and sexual norms and stereotypes of Japanese female
submissiveness and passivity. She identified strongly with Black culture on a
personal level and in relation to Okinawa’s subjugated geopolitical position.
Her work and political beliefs call for self-empowerment that is at the heart
of the Black Power movement. She states:
Since black people were increasing their civil rights back home in the U.S. at
the time, and the “Black Power” phenomenon reached as far as Okinawa. While
starting to photograph the U.S. soldiers, my concern shifted to the Okinawan
hostesses with whom I worked at the same bar and women who drifted in from
“Yamato” (the mainland). The women, who dream of marrying U.S. soldiers
and living happily ever after, are betrayed over and over. The women, who are
skilled at getting [?] supply them with money and goods. The women, who are
intoxicated all the time with alcohol and drugs. The women popular among the
soldiers in spite of being quite homely. The women who bear a soldier’s child
and marry him, going off to the U.S. to live. . . . These women had to be brave
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes
159
to live in Okinawa. When I was walking with a black man, I saw everyone’s
eyes filled with contempt and curiosity. “What’s wrong with loving a black
man? What’s wrong with enjoying sex?” I myself was young and attractive in
those days. I was popular with the soldiers and lived with two black soldiers. It
was the heyday of my youth. Those women’s ways of life greatly inspired me.31
Her photographic intent went beyond capturing gender dynamics between
Black servicemen and Okinawan hostesses insisting instead that the women
exercised sexual and relational agency despite the unequal economic and
military situation in which they lived. Her photographs are thus an act of
resistance offering a critique of the effects of the limited economic opportunities and risk placed on the bodies of women in Okinawa by the U.S. and
Japanese militarization. The reprinted 2013 version of the book opens with
lively street, bar and club scenes of the Teruya district on Mutumi Street
between Club 69, Club New Surf Side, Club Boston, and a swing dance club
and introduces us to a group of Okinawan hostesses and their African American boyfriends—including a photo of the men with one arm around their girlfriends and the other raised in a Black Power salute. As an ethnic minority of
Japan, Ishikawa places herself in solidarity with Blacks and, to quote feminist
theorist bell hooks’s concept, Ishikawa employs what bell hooks termed as
an “oppositional gaze” (confrontational, gesturing resistance, and challenging
authority), staring back dangerously at those who might question her desires.
“Even in the worse circumstances of domination,” hooks wrote, “the ability
to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would
contain it, opens up the possibility of agency” (hooks 1992, 116). At the same
time, we do have to consider the very different reactions to her images when
they were circulated in Tokyo, where they could be safely consumed and
might event reify stereotypes of Blackness and Okinawan otherness, versus
their hostile reception in the Okinawan communities in which the Okinawan
women lived.
Following the controversy with Hot Days in Camp Hansen!! and the dissolution of her marriage, Ishikawa refused to be defeated. She opened an
izakaya-style food and drink bar, A-man, in the Aja district of Naha to economically support her own daughter. She continued to focus on Okinawa’s
gritty underbelly and gained recognition with her 1983–1986 “Port Town
Elegy” series, featuring Okinawan dockworkers, fishermen, the unemployed
and homeless. When she went back to visit her old Kin Town bar in the
late 1980s, “The only Okinawan working there was the female store owner;
the hostesses had all been replaced by women from the Philippines.”32 This
inspired her 1988–1989 “Philippine Dancers” series on Filipina migrants in
Okinawan bars, highlighting their role as primary breadwinners for their extended families, and culminating in gift laden trips home to the Philippines.
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Ishikawa’s inclusion of Filipina diaspora subjects point to her sense of ethnic
solidarity with other minorities as well as her intersectional understanding of
the lives of women in the militarized and postcolonial zones of the Pacific.
LIFE IN PHILLY
Ishikawa’s 1987 “Life in Philly” series similarly provides a gendered, racial,
and economic critique of U.S. and Japanese empire abroad and at home as
she traced the trajectory of another of her former Kin Town subjects, African American U.S. soldier Myron Carr. Ishikawa met Myron Carr when he
was stationed in Okinawa from 1975–1977. He was dating a girlfriend of
hers from the Koza bar scene and Ishikawa and Carr struck up a platonic
friendship that would last over twenty years, across two continents. They
would call each other brother and sister and write letters every year. Their
friendship reflects a Third World Movement consciousness between Blacks
and Asians stemming from U.S. anti-Vietnam War protests and the Black
and Yellow Power solidarity of the time. This spirit of shared resistance and
framework of uniting as “people of color” began to emerge in Okinawa.33
“Okinawans are ethnic minorities in Japan,” Naoko Uchima elaborated, “in
all her work Mao always views things from the minority perspective—for
example, Koreans who grow up in Japan or Black people. . . . She is always
looking from the perspective of the minority.”34 As Okinawan American
scholar Wesley Ueunten has been careful to point out, while discrimination
against Blacks by Okinawans does exist, they shared cultural and political
affinities with Black soldiers. Black military personnel were frequently at
a lower pay scale than their white counterparts, and they tended to eat and
drink local products rather than expensive imported goods (e.g. Orion Beer
vs. Heineken), and many also participated in local festivals and dances.
More substantial political affinities were exemplified in the 1971 Koza
“Riot” (which Ueunten clarifies was actually an uprising), when a crowd
of hundreds of Okinawans gathered to torch and overturn military vehicles
to express their outrage over a seemingly minor traffic hit-and-run incident
involving an intoxicated American driver and an Okinawan civilian pedestrian. It was a culmination of frustration after twenty-five years of U.S.
military occupation and a long pattern of traffic incidents and more serious
crimes such as rapes by military personnel against Okinawans that had gone
unpunished in a manner that was perceived to be unacceptable by the majority of Okinawan civilians. In contrast to the official view of the military
authorities, African American activist soldiers distributed “a flyer written
in English and Japanese” supporting the Okinawans in their protest actions:
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes
161
So you see we both are in the same situation. . . . The Black GI’s are aware
of this situation that brought about the riot, and this was truly a RIGHT-ONMOVE. That’s the only way they’ll bend. (Ueunten 2010, 115)
Flyers such as these demonstrate the multifaceted position of African American GIs in Okinawa, and their complex solidarities with the local Okinawan
residents.
These reciprocal solidarities can be seen when Mao Ishikawa closed her
bar in 1986 and left her six-year-old daughter with her parents to take a summer trip to Philadelphia to visit her old friend Myron Carr, now in his thirties.
“After a long, long flight I finally arrived in Philadelphia. Myron, who had
put on weight and was sporting a beard, came to meet me. He’d aged a bit
since I knew him in Okinawa, but he still had the same kind eyes. It was as
though we’d never said goodbye: ‘Myron!’ ‘Mao!’” (Ishikawa 2009, inside
cover). She didn’t go on the trip with the intention of making documentary
photographs. In “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” and “Port Town Elegy,”
Ishikawa employed an embedded ethnographic method to her photography—
becoming part of the community over time until her subjects were at ease in
front of the camera. In shooting “Life in Philly,” however, the opportunity to
shoot photographs presented itself more spontaneously as Myron introduced
Ishikawa to his circle of friends and his twin brother Byron.
Across 132 black and white photographs, Ishikawa takes us to the “City
of Brotherly Love” in the midst of sweltering heat and a twenty-day garbage
strike. Shot with a Nikon F2 in classic 35mm street photography form, the
series features images of youth horsing around in the “hood” with old-school,
Adidas-clad hip-hop enthusiasts mugging for the camera. Her photographs
capture working class African American families in North Philly. Old folks
chat on the front stoop, while they tend a summer BBQ. A pit bull chained to
a telephone pole lifts his leg to pee and stares back defiantly at the camera. A
diaper is changed. Hair is picked and braided. Kids cool off, stripped down to
their skivvies while watching TV. Couples bicker. A brother wearing a motorcycle jacket emblazoned with “Friends MC7 Phila. PA” greets a comrade
with a hearty slap on the back. Looking at Ishikawa’s “Life in Philly,” I’m
reminded of Yasuhiro Ishimoto’s photographs in Chicago, Chicago (1969)
in how she has created a portrait of a city and mixed American urban street
photographic traditions with the Japanese photobook tradition.35 These works
also run parallel to Jamel Shabazz’s photographs of Black Brooklynites and
Richard Sandler’s photographs of New Yorkers in the 1970s and 1980s.
In one of Ishikawa’s iconic images, a young woman licks rolling papers
to seal a joint. She wears a t-shirt with the Newport cigarette slogan “Alive
with Pleasure.” It is in this playful manner that Ishikawa’s work departs from
the street photography genre as she leads us into back alleys, nightclubs, and
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intimate bedroom scenes reminiscent of her “hot” subject matter in “Hot
Days in Camp Hansen!!”
While it was her good friend Myron who showed her around his neighborhood, it was his twin brother Byron who became the central protagonist in
“Life in Philly.” She described Myron as the more serious of the two, the one
who went to work each day, and Byron as being “a bit more of a playboy.”36
In choosing Byron as a subject, Ishikawa’s work frames a more decadent version of African American history and foregoes covering the more responsible
Myron—a choice, which like her “Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!” series, leaves
the viewer wondering if her position is of one of affinity or exploitation.
We see Byron at a Citgo gas station. He is wearing a muscle shirt and jeans.
Regular gas was only .69 cents a gallon. A Colt 45 beer billboard ad looms in
the background featuring Billy Dee Williams in a sharp suit and a suggestive
twinkle in his eye with the slogan, “Colt 45, it works every time.” With the
same candor, Ishikawa turns her lens indoors and shows us heteronormative
images of Byron in bed with his girlfriend in staged acts of foreplay to enjoying a post-coitus beer and cigarette while watching TV.37 Using language
that too easily slips into primitivism, Keiichi Takeuchi described these scenes
in the accompanying text for the photobook version of Life in Philly, “The
naked pudgy limbs reveal a savage earthiness which is part of the urban culture” (Takeuchi 2009, 46). This ampleness is accentuated through Ishikawa’s
upturned camera angles and close framing on fleshy body parts.
In her July 1986 statement on the work Ishikawa writes,
I asked Byron if he would mind me taking pictures of him in bed with one of
the women. He OK’d my request immediately and right away brought along
his girlfriend, who was about to turn nineteen. She had two small children and
had just given birth to a third. “Look!,” she said, and squeezing her breast she
expressed some breast milk. (Ishikawa 2009, inside cover)
She thus reveals a bodily familiarity shared between women, which is emphasized in other scenes where multiple nude woman lounge around on a bed
smoking, comparing stretch marks and joking around.
Ishikawa employs an unfussy aesthetic as she portrays sexuality as a matter-of-fact. We consistently see the subjects’ faces. No one is disembodied,
as they are so frequently in the surreal Japanese experimental art photography
of her mainland peers (e.g. Nobuyoshi Araki’s erotic photos of anonymous
Asian women bound in ropes and chains). While not portrayed in these
intimate frames, Ishikawa’s role as an observer/voyeur and her “emotional
record” is present through the narrative text and raises questions if she is an
insider or outsider here.
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163
Figure 8.3. Mao Ishikawa, Bryon Carr, and his girlfriend in 1986, Life in Philly. Published in 2011 by Gallery Out of Place/Zen Foto Gallery.
Courtesy of Mao Ishikawa.
“I don’t know how I managed to take photos of all the various scenes,
which are all so very natural. In every one of them, everyone is unselfconsciously themselves and they are unabashed by my presence,” Ishikawa wrote
in 2009 upon reflecting on seeing the works exhibited for the first time in
over twenty years (Ishikawa 2009, inside cover). I am reminded of American
photographer Nan Goldin’s rebuttal of photography’s assumed voyeurism, “it
ceases to be an external experience and becomes a part of the relationship,
which is heightened by the camera, not distanced. The camera connects me
to the experience and clarifies what is going on between me and the subject”
(Goldin 1986, 277).
When the “Life in Philly” prints were first exhibited at Minolta Photo
Space in Tokyo in 1987 Ishikawa printed them poster sized. In this decontextualized space, how did the cross-cultural and spatial context of the photographs’ reception rely on and reinforce ideas of Blackness? Scholar Mitzi
Uehara Carter, author of the blog Grits and Sushi, suggests that from her
perspective as a mixed-race Black Okinawan,
Blackness . . . in the post-reversion era is so acutely tied to militarization so that
linking it to other possibilities is difficult, especially outside Central Okinawa
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where bases are heavily concentrated. What does it mean for contemporary Okinawan viewers to see Black bodies framed in such a way, so intimately, so desirable, so de-militarized in the bedroom or caught in the banality of the everyday?
Does it challenge static understandings of Blackness as “government-issued” or
inflame feelings about crossing into an off-limit territory to some extent—of the
fence line itself?38
Ishikawa showed the series one more time in 1988 in a solo show in Naha
City Gallery in Okinawa. It was not until 2007 that she had the opportunity
to exhibit the works again, alongside a series of self-portraits, in her “Laugh
it off!” exhibit at Gallery Out of Place, in Naha City. Collector Mark Pearson
purchased the vintage prints and in 2009 his Gallery Out of Place published
an oversized photobook titled Life in Philly: Mao Ishikawa. Printed in
saturated rich blacks with full page and double page bleeds, the images are
contextualized with minimal explanatory text, and interspersed with crowded
montage layouts.
CONCLUSION
In the context of Okinawa during the U.S. war in Vietnam, the sexualized
gaze of U.S. soldiers, Black and white alike, subjugated Okinawan hostesses.
While many of the women may have worked the bars with the “dream of
marrying U.S. soldiers and living happily ever,” some, like Ishikawa, were
looking for adventure, love, friendship, and sexual freedom. Ishikawa positioned herself as a hostess and dared to look back seeking solidarity with
African American soldiers who shared affinities of resistance as ethnic and
racial minorities. Ten years later in Life in Philly, she played the “Othered”
role of Asian tourist in the U.S., photographing Black inner city life. But even
here she disrupts the stereotype of the time of the “group-minded Japanese
tourist . . . generally armed with two cameras, one on each hip” (Sontag
1973, 10). Ishikawa’s gaze both dominated and befriended her female Black
subjects. Was she an “artist as ethnographer,” as art critic Hal Foster (1996)
would say, employing an imperialist gaze? Or could her Third World movement era solidarity with Blacks and indigenous position as a minoritized
Okinawan woman be seen more along the lines of indigenous scholar Linda
Tuhiwai Smith’s perspective, with Ishikawa claiming Afro-Asian spaces to
give testimony, tell stories, remember, and celebrate survival (Smith 2012,
143–164)? As Asian American scholar Gary Y. Okihiro has written about
the Black Pacific, “this detour into ‘the imperial and colonial zones,’ in Paul
Gilroy’s words, away from the centers and toward the margins, reveals the
workings of empire not only on colonial subjects but also and reciprocally on
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes
165
the colonizers in return, like spiders in the bananas of the empire” (Okihiro
2006, 315).
In drawing the two series together, marked differences in the responses of
her subjects become apparent. Binaries of male/female or Black/white power
relationships are insufficient as there are multiple hierarchies of positionality and diverse femininities at play (Enloe 2007, 147). Whereas the women
of Kin reacted negatively to the publication of Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!,
when Life in Philly was published and Mao mailed him a copy in March of
2010, Myron enthusiastically responded.39 He was so pleased that he couldn’t
stop crying as many of the people she had photographed had already passed
away. Her photographs captured the spirit of the times and brought back fond
memories. Byron was also reportedly happy with his pictures. They felt like
she had made them movie stars.40 Myron passed away in October 22, 2011
of a genetic condition and Bryon died of the same cause shortly thereafter on
August 1, 2012.41 The brothers’ portrayal and positive reaction could be seen
as reinforcing stereotypical masculinist images of Black males as possessing
hypersexual prowess. It is telling that the girlfriends in Life in Philly remain
anonymous, as do the women of Kin Town (though the Kin women got to
“speak” back to the photos quite forcefully, while the Philly women have not
had or chosen to take that opportunity). Ishikawa’s work provides a critique
of militarization that is problematized by Black sexuality and the subjectivity
of Okinawan women. Her work gains much of its poignancy through teetering on sensibilities of exploitation and desire, often as intimate insider to the
real lives of those around her. Through Okinawan eyes, her work extends the
visual archive of the Black Pacific by centering Black bodies within Japanese
history.42
NOTES
1. Japanese names have been presented in the American manner with the first
name followed by the surname.
2. The terms “hostess” and “barmaid” are used interchangeably in this chapter. At
the request of Ishikawa, I have used the term “hostess” to describe her former employment. “Barmaid” and “lady in Kin Town” have also been used in places where I
am directly quoting from previously published citations from Ishikawa. In Okinawa,
the terms “barmaid” or “bar girls” typically referred to a cocktail server who worked
at the bars in front of the counter with a wage often determined primarily on their
ability to socialize with GI men, but who had more choice around non-economically
based relations. “Hostesses,” in the modern Japanese sense of the word, refers to
women hired with an expectation to go on “dates” with customers. “Hostess,” in the
U.S. context, refers to women hired to welcome and seat customers at the front of
166
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restaurant or bar. Although prostitution is discussed in this chapter, Ishikawa stressed
that she and her fellow hostesses were not prostituted and the implications are that
she was a “barmaid” in the historical sense of this word who now chooses to use the
contemporary American English language context of the word “hostess.”
3. “Fence lines” refers to the book title Mao Ishikawa: Fences. For “Black Pacific” see (Gerald Horne, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in
the South Seas after the Civil War (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2007);
Bernard Scott Lucious, “In the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements,” in Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas,
ed. by Wanni W. Anderson and Robert G. Lee (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2005);
Gary Okihiro, “Toward a Black Pacific,” in AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History,
and Politics, ed. by Hike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon Steen (New York, NY:
New York University Press, 2006.)
4. Thanks to Mitzi Uehara Carter, Jan Christian Bernabe, and Ryan Yokota for
their critical feedback and Nariko Oshiro and Hiroko Saito for assisting with translation.
5. In person interview with Mao Ishikawa and Naoko Uchima by Laura Kina,
Naha, Okinawa, June 28, 2012. Although Ishikawa speaks English, because of her
written proficiency, Uchima acted as a translator and intermediary in subsequent email and SKYPE exchanges on September 1 and September 12, 2012, with additional
clarifacations from 2012–2013, and a final in-person interview with Mao Ishikawa
by Laura Kina at the A&W Yagibaru, Kitanakagusku-son, Okinawa on November
27, 2013.
6. Since initially writing this essay, Mao Ishikawa has published in the U.S. her
first monograph Red Flower, The Women of Okinawa (New York: Session Press,
2017).
7. See Mao Ishikawa’s books: Fences, Okinawa; Here’s What the Japanese Flag
Means to Me; Life in Philly; Morika’s Dream; A Port Town Elegy; Sachiko Nakada’s
Theater Company. The photobook is a tradition in Japan, which UK Guardian photography reviewer Sean O’Hagen described as “often an art object in itself, merging
text, image and design into a unified whole that is often breathtaking in its ambition.”
Sean O’Hagen, “Grainy glory: how Keizo Kitajima tore up the Japanese photobook,”
April 20, 2012, Guardian.co.uk. Accessed September 6, 2012. http://www.guardian.
co.uk/artanddesign/2012/apr/20/keizo-kitajima-photo-express-tokyo.
8. The formerly independent Ryukyu Kingdom of Okinawa, which was conquered by Japan in 1879, had been taken over by U.S. military control following the
Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and was “reverted” to Japanese control in 1972.
9. Mao Ishikawa, “Hot Days in Camp Hanson,” quoted from “Non-Sect Radical:
Contemporary Photography III” (2004), Yokohama Museum of Art, Maoishikawa.
com, Accessed September 4, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/works/hot-days-in-camphansen.html.
10. Taro Amano, “When A Personal History Changes into History, Mao Ishikawa,
and the History of Okinawa,” (Yokahama Art Foundation, 2012), Maoishikawa.
com. Accessed September 4, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/press/when-a-personalhistory-changes-into-history.html.
The Black Pacific Through Okinawan Eyes
167
11. Atsuki hibi in Kyanpu Hansen 熱き日々 in キャンプハンセン！！ (Hot
Days in Camp Hansen!!), Museum number 2011,3037.1. Accessed June 21, 2016.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.
aspx?objectId=3412893&partId=1.
12. See also Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing
Women’s Lives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); Rhacel Salazar
Parreñas, Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
13. Eric Slavin, “Osaka mayor: ‘Wild Marines’ should consider using prostitutes,”
Stars and Stripes Okinawa, May 15, 2013. Accessed November 28, 2013. http://
okinawa.stripes.com/news/osaka-mayor-%E2%80%98wild-marines%E2%80%99should-consider-using-prostitutes.
14. Yoko Fukumura, “Okinawa: Effects of long-term US military presence,”
Genuine Security.org. Accessed September 15, 2012. http://www.genuinesecurity.
org/partners/okinawa.html.
15. Mao Ishikawa, e-mail message to author, July 11, 2013.
16. “Murder and rape of the locals who worked in the ‘special districts’ and in US
military bases were frequent, heinous, and insufficiently investigated or prosecuted
by authorities.”
17. 1955 Yumiko-chan, 1962 Kokuba-kun incidents, and the 1995 case.
18. Ben Westcott, “Japanese woman’s murder provokes protests against U.S.
bases in Okinawa,” CNN.com, June 20, 2016. Accessed June 24, 2016. http://www.
cnn.com/2016/06/20/asia/us-military-base-protests-okinawa/.
19. Mao Ishikawa, e-mail message to author, July 22, 2013.
20. Ayelet Zohar, “Okinawa-Philadelphia-Tokyo: The Specificity and Complexity of Mao Ishikawa’s Photographic Work,” TAP Trans Asia Photography Review,
vol 2, issue 2, spring 2012. Accessed September 4, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/
spo.7977573.0002.204.
21. Ibid, Uchima interview September 1, 2012; location names verified by a site
visit to Okinawa City on November 28, 2013.
22. Both as in “going into the Bush” jungles of Vietnam and in reference to the socalled “Bushmen” San People of Southern Africa who had been a subject of Western
anthropological study and media fascination starting in the 1950s.
23. Ishikawa’s use of “Japanese girls” here includes mainland Japanese and
Okinawan women; Mao Ishikawa, “Ishikawa Mao: ‘All you Need Is LOVE’ Artist
Interview #1,” Roppongi Hills and Mori Art Museum 10th Anniversary Exhibition “All You Need is LOVE” YouTube, June 4, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=q8ITNty0G9w.
24. Mao Ishikawa, Atsuki hibi in Kyanpu Hansen 熱き日々 in キャンプハンセ
ン！！ (Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!), Aaman Shuppan, Okinawa, Japan, 1982, The
British Museum.org. Accessed 13 September 13, 2012. http://www.britishmuseum.
org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=3
412893&partid=1&searchText=web&fromDate=1700&fromADBC=ad&toDate=21
00&toADBC=ad&numpages=10&images=on&orig=%2Fresearch%2Fsearch_the_
collection_database.aspx&currentPage=5.
168
Chapter Eight
25. Taro Amano quoted in “When a personal history changes into History,” ibid,
Maoishikawa.com. Accessed September 6, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/press/
when-a-personal-history-changes-into-history.html.
26. I did not have access to interview any of the women directly to get their perspective on Ishikawa’s photographs.
27. Ibid, Hot Days in Camp Hansen!!
28. Ibid, Taro Amano.
29. Although the work was shown again in 2004, the book has since been taken
out of circulation.
30. See image by Toyomitsu Higa and Mao Ishikawa, Hot Days in Camp Hansen
!!, 1977, 25.7 x 18.9 cm, BritishMuseum.org. Accessed September 13, 2012. http://
www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=3412893&partid=1&searchText=web&fromDate=1700&fromA
DBC=ad&toDate=2100&toADBC=ad&numpages=10&images=on&orig=%2Fresea
rch%2Fsearch_the_collection_database.aspx&currentPage=5.
31. Mao Ishikawa, “Hot Days in Camp Hanson” quoted from “Non-Sect Radical:
Contemporary Photography III,” ibid, Maoishikawa.com. Accessed July 30, 2012.
http://maoishikawa.com/works/hot-days-in-camp-hansen.html.
32. Mao Ishikawa, “Philippine Dancers,” Maoishikawa.com. Accessed September
6, 2012. http://maoishikawa.com/works/philippine-dancers.html.
33. See also “The Presence of (Black) Liberation in Okinawa Freedom Transnational Moments, 1968–1972” by Yuichirio Onishi in Extending the Diaspora: New
Histories of Black People, ed. by Dawne Y. Curry, Eric D. Duke, Marshanda A.
Smith (Urbana, IL: Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 2009), Ch 8.
34. Ibid, Uchima interview, September 1, 2012.
35. Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Chicago, Chicago (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1969).
36. Ibid, Ishikawa interview, June 28, 2012.
37. In reality these were staged shots, “the couples were playing” and not actually
having sex. Ibid, Uchima interview, September 13, 2012.
38. Mitzi Uehara Carter, e-mail message to author, September 14, 2012.
39. Translation provided by Naoko Uchima, ibid September 13, 2012, of Mao
Ishikawa, “マイロンの感想 (Myron Straight),” Blog.livedoor.jp/ishikawa. Accessed
September 13, 2012. http://blog.livedoor.jp/ishikawamao/archives/65822907.html.
40. Ibid, Ishikawa interview June 28, 2012. To date these works have yet to be exhibited in the U.S. so the full implications of the photographs have not been actively
debated in African American contexts.
41. Ibid, Ishikawa interview, November 27, 2013.
42. “Through Okinawan eyes” alludes to the title of a memoir of twenty-eight boys
from Okinawa who attended the University of New Mexico in 1950. Jane Leuders
and Edward G. Kluckhohn, Through Okinawan Eyes (Albuquerque, NM: University
of New Mexico Press, 1951). It is not meant to assume that Ishikawa’s perspective
stands for all Okinawans.
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Index
Abe, Kosuzu, 82–83
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 111
Action Committee for Solidarity with
Asia (ACSA), 89–90, 92
Afghanistan, 43, 96, 151
age of localism, 63
Amano, Taro, 151, 156
American military, 112; bases, ix, 90,
122. See also, U.S. military bases;
base construction, 43; culture, 136;
government, 3; personnel, 147n6;
presence, ix, 113, 116, 128; ration,
133; servicemen, See American
servicemen. soldiers, xii, 22, 82, 86,
129–130, 137; wives’ associations,
26
American servicemen, viii; African
American, xiv, 149; Violence
committed by, 137; Carr, Myron,
149, 160–3
Angst, Linda Isako, 154
annexation; of Okinawa, 59, 79n2; of
the Ryukyus, 6–7. See also, Ryukyu.
of the Ryukyu Islands, xi; of the
Ryukyu Kingdom, xi
anti-U.S. base activities, 82–85, 95–96,
99–100; activism, viii, 83–85,
99; activists, 98–100; campaigns,
81–2, 94–96; civic activism, 81,
84; demonstration, viii; group, 95;
in Guam, 81; in Hawai’i, 81; in
Okinawa, xiii, 81, 88–92, 94–97,
100, 151; in Philippines, 90; in South
Korea, 85, 90–91, 94, 95–97, 100;
Koza Riot, 160; movement, xiii, 83,
85, 88–93, 95–97, 100; politics, 99;
solidarity movement, 82, 88, 94, 100;
struggle, 82, 85, 88, 91, 94–95, 100
Anzaldúa, Gloria E., 126
Arakaki Tokiko, 89
Arasaki Moriteru, See OKPS
Asia-Pacific, ix–xi, 30, 42–43, 49, 55,
96
Assimilation; cultural, 42; instrument
of, 124; into the Japanese identity,
8; of Okinawa, 69; Okinawan, 124;
policies, xi; assimilationist, 105
Australia, 81, 83, 151
Battle of Okinawa, xi, 7, 16–17, 24,
86–87, 132, 166n8; memory of, 67
Bhabha, Homi, 117
Bhowmik Davinder, 124–5
B-yen, 48
Camp Zukeran, 1, 14
centralization, 60–61, 64; of power, 72
Certeau, Michel de, 23
185
186
Index
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 83;
Provincializing Europe, 83
Champurū, 121–3, 127–9, 131–4,
136, 137, 145; f/actor, 124–5, 128,
132, 134, 138, 141, 145–6; feeling
of, 144; effect, 124–5, 127, 143;
history, 134; model, 140; moment,
145; reading, 123; space, 144; story,
132, 134, 137; text, xiv, 121–3, 127,
129–133, 136–138; writing, 121–2,
146; zone, 127, 130, 133
China, x, xiii, 3–4, 8, 42–43, 67, 74,
78; anti-base movement in, xiii; civil
war, xi; political and cultural system,
x; Qing, 13
Christy, Alan, 124
citizenship, 46, 78, 105, 113; cultural,
113; global inequality of, 49; U.S.,
46, 49
Civil Affairs Handbooks; on Taiwan, 1;
on the Ryukyu Islands, 1
Cold War, 153; era, viii; geopolitics,
24, 30; history of, 118; in Europe,
82; Island, vii, viii; legacy of, ix;
politics, 23; rhetoric, 23; U.S.,
23–24, 34, 38; years, 43, 55
Commodore Matthew Perry, 5, 18
common ancestry; theory, 6–9
constitution, 62, 66; Japanese, 36, 62,
66; peace, 72; postwar, 77; U.S., 36
constitutional revision, 72–73
Coolidge, Harold, 1, 15
Cueto, Marcos, 23
Davis, Angela, 82
decentralization, 60, 73
decolonial, 121–5, 131, 137, 146;
“third,” 121, 124, 133; f/actor,
122–5, 128, 136, 138, 143, 145–6;
possibility, 121, 123–5, 131, 134,
141, 146; studies, 146; writing, 122
Dietz, Kelly, 78, 82
direct democracy, 61;
disposal of the Kingdom of Ryukyu, xi
dōshūsei, 74–75
Doerr, Neriko Musha, 111
Douglas, Mary, 107
Dulles, John Foster, xii
empire, 87, 123; American, x, xiii;
American agents of, 153; bananas
of, 165; creation of, 43; building, 34;
Japanese, 22, 87, 160; liaison of, 34;
of Japan, 7, 9; regimes of, 114; U.S.,
22, 34; workings of, 164
Enkakuji temple, 7
Enloe, Cynthia, xiii, 152
environmentalist network OkinawaU.S., 82
Espiritu, Yen Le, 23
ethnicity, xi, 9, 65, 119, 126, 139
Fabi, Giulia, 134
Fija, Byron; amerika-kei uchinaanchu,
118
Filipino, 39–57. See also, Philippines;
community, xii; labor, 43, 47;
migration project, xii; nationals, 39,
49, 52–3; TCNs, 39–57; women, 45
Foster, Hal, 152, 164
France, 81
Fukase, Masahisa, 152
Garver, Marjorie, 121
General Headquarters, the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers
(GHQ/SCAP), 14, 24, 38n3, 61–2
General Headquarters of the Far East
Command, 49, 57n8
Germany, xii, xiii, 81
Gilroy, Paul, 164,
Government Appropriation for Relief in
Occupied Area (GARIOA), 30,
G.I., xiv, 29, 155
Global North, 53
Global South, 43, 53
Government of the Ryukyu Islands
(GRI), 21, 32, 36–37, 62; nursing
officials, 31; grassroots democracy,
61, 71
Index
“great men of Ryukyu,” 7
Guam, 51, 81, 151; anti-base. See antiU.S. base activities; Chamorro, 82
haafu, See mixed-race identities
Haneji shioki, 8, 10
hanfukkiron-sha, xii, 60, 79n3
Hawai’i, ix, 22, 30, 81; Universities of,
15; anti-base activities in, See antiU.S. base activities
Headquarters of the National Campaign
for the Eradication of Crimes by U.S.
troops, See Jumibun
health center, 25, 28, 29: public, 24–25,
32
hegemony; American, 55, 100; cultural,
xiv; LDP, 62–63
Higashionna Kanjun, x, 1–20
Higa Shunchō, 8, 15
Higa Toyomitsu, 156
historiography, ix, x, 1–20
Hokari Minoru, 83
Hong Kong, 78
hooks, bell, 159
hybrid, 127, 129, 133, 139;
hybridity, xiv, 103–119, 133, 139;
hybridization, 121
identity, 109, 117, 121, 123, 128;
American national, 109; categories,
103, 117–119; cultural, 83;
discourses of, 113; ethnic, 22;
Japanese, 8; Japanese national, 104;
minoritized, 113; mixed race, 104–
109; Okinawan, ix, 2, 42, 54, 113;
political, 82; politics, 83; queer, 111;
Ryukyuan, 2, 42, 54
Iha Fuyū, x, 2, 6–10, 13, 19n4
imperial Japanese army, 26, 28
independent Ryukyuan nation, 64, 75
Institute of Public Health, 24–25, 28
Internationalism, 5, 84
International Women’s Club, 26
Ishikawa, Mao, xiv; 87, 149–53,
156–60, 166; “Fences, Okinawa,”
187
150, 166n3; “Here’s what the
Japanese flag means to me,” 150;
“Hot Days in Camp Hasen!!,” xiv,
149–52, 155–60, 162, 165; “Hot
Days in Okinawa,” 150, 153, 158;
“Life in Philly,” xiv, 149–50, 156,
160–3, 165; “Philippine’s Dancers,”
159; “Port Town Elegy,” 150; “The
Perpetual Moment: Visions within
Okinawa and Korea,” 150
Ishikawa Takashi, 99
Ishimoto, Yasuhiro, 161
Japan, vii, x-xiv, 1–3
Japanese, x, 3; anti-base movement in,
. See anti- U.S. base; art history, 2;
bases in, vii; colonies, 3; cool, 106;
government of, xi; government,
x-xi, 1; history, 3; Imperial Army,
147n4; imperial authorities, xi;
Imperial Rescript on Education,
124; intellectual discussion, xiii;
intellectual tradition, 2; mixedrace, xivSee mixed-race identitites;
nation-building, xii; nation-state
framework, xii; nation-state status,
xii; peace treaty with, xii; politics,
xi; prefecture, vii; readership, 2;
role, xii; rule, xi; ruling power of,
3; scholars, 2; school education,
xi; semi-colonial rule, xi; southern
border of, xi; -style, xi; systems of
local autonomy, xiii; tourists, vii
Japanese Red Cross, 25, 28, 30
Jumibun, 90–1, 94
Kamada, Laurel, 106, 113
Kano Masanao, 7–8, 21
Kaser, Josephine Hobbs, 24– 27, 32
Kelsky, Karen, 110
Kerama Island, 86–7, 127; Aka-jima,
86, 88; Kerama Oceanic Culture
Museum, 87; Zamami-jima, 86, 88
Kerr, George, x, 1–20
keystone of the Pacific, 45, 153
188
Index
Kim Yong-han, 90–1, 94
Kimura Tetsuya, 38n2
Kina, Ikue, 126–7
Kingdom of Ryukyu. See, Ryukyu
Kingdom.
Kinjō Kiyomatsu, 25
Koikari, Mire, xiv, 22–23
kōkan-san, 26–27
Komachi, Yoshihara, xiv, 122–123,
131–137
Korean War, 24, 62, 84, 88, 96–97, 154
Ko Ryūkyū, 6, 8
Kyoto Imperial University, 8
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 62
Lie, John, 104
local autonomy, xii-xiii, 59–64, 68–69,
72–75, 77–78
Local Autonomy Law, 62, 66
local nationals (LNs), 43–46, 50–52, 54
local women’s association, 34
Lutz, Cathrine, 43
MacArthur, Douglas, 42, 54, 154
Manalansan, Martin, 111
Matayoshi Kōwa, 4–5, 14–15, 17
Matsumura, Wendy, ix
Marcos, Ferdinand, 89–90
Meiji; period, 72, 77; Restoration, 11;
Government, xi, 16, 42
Middle East, xiii
Minamoto Tametomo, 13
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 13–14, 88
Ministry of the Interior, 61
mixed-race identities, xiv; 104, 112–4,
116, 140–1; AmerAsian school, 113,
118; Amerasian, 105, 113; beauty
pageants and, 109; children, 113,
115; daboru, 108; documentary on,
111, 118–9; haafu, xiv, 103–119;
identities, See also, identity; in
Philippines, 128; in South Korea, 97,
117; in Vietnam, 117; international
marriages, 105; konketsuji, 139;
zainichi Koreans, 86, 92–3, 100n1
mixed-race people; Uchimura Moraga,
Akira, 108; Miyamoto, Ariana, 109;
Davuluri, Nina, 109; Yoshikawa,
Priyanka, 109
Miyazato Kiyogorō, 87
Molasky, Michael, 139
Moon, Seungsook, xiii
Moon Se-gwang, 94
Moriyama, Daido, 152
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 105
Mulvey, Laura, 157
Murdock, George, 1
Muñoz, José, 125
Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen, 112
Nakada Tsuyoshi, xiv, 122–123, 131,
134, 137–138, 140–145; The Black
District Red Telephone Booth, 131,
137
nansei shotō. See Ryukyu Islands
nation-state, 65, 88, 105; framework,
xii; Japanese, 66; of Japan, 105;
Okinawan, 60; peripheral, 41; status,
xii; system, 60, 79n3; nationalism,
xii; exclusionary, 78; Japanese, 9;
Okinawan, 3–4, 7, 79n1
National Diet Library, 14
National Leader Program (NLP), 30–32,
37
National Research Council, 1
Navy Military Government, 1
Nixon oil shock, 63
Noiri Naomi, 113
Nobuyoshi, Araki, 152
North Korea, 43, 55, 74, 93
Ohno Shun, 46–47
Okabayashi Nobuyasu, 144
Okihiro, Gary Y., 164
Okinawa; Advisory Council, 3;
autonomous state of, 68, 72–73,
75–76; autonomy of, 21, 60, 65,
68, 70, 75; Civilian Administration,
3–4; Cultural Association,
14–15; Development Bank,
Index
74; Development Bureau, 73;
Development Office. See, Okinawa
Development Bureau; disposition of,
ix; Guntō Seifu; Gusuku sites in, vii;
Kerama, See Kerama, See Kerama
Islands; Kin Town, 154, 156,
158–60, 65; Koza, 21, 28, 123–124,
127–132, 137–147, 149, 154, 156,
160; Literature of, 129; Naha, 28–29,
159, 151; Prefectural Government,
14, 20, 98; Prefectural Library, 7;
Promotion and Development Plan,
64; shima kutuba, 124–7, 133,
138, 146; Social Masses Party, 63;
sovereignty of, 69, 112; state in, 76;
System, 68; Takae, 81, 98; Teruya’s
black district, 135, 137–8, 140–3,
149, 156, 179; University of, 85, 88;
Women’s Federation (OWF), 34
Okinawan Studies, 6, 14, 22, 123;
Father of, 6
Okinawa Korean People´s Solidarity,
See OKPS
Okikan, See OKPS
OKPS; 81, 84, -6, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96–8;
Arasaki Moriteru (founder of), xiii,
79n5, 85, 88–9, 91, 96; Nishio Ichirō
(founder of) 84, 84–5, 89–94, 98–9;
Takahashi Toshio (founder of), 84–9,
98; Tomiyama Masahiro (founder
of), 84–5, 88–9, 91–2
Ōmine Chieko, 38n2
Omoro sōshi, 6
Onishi, Yuichiro, 82–83
Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, 21
Pacific Islands, xiii
Pacific Science Board, 1, 3, 10, 14–15
Park Sunam, 86–8
Park Chung-hee, 94
Pearson, Mark, 164
Philippines, ix, xii, 22, 30, 39, 41,
46–53, 56, 81, 88–90, 122, 151, 159;
Anti-base activities in, See anti-U.S.
base activities
189
Philippines-Ryukyus Command
(PHILRYCOM), 57, 169
Philippine Scouts, 40, 47
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 104
politics of living, 23
progressive local government, 63
public health nurse, xiv, 21–38. See
also, kōkan-san; consultant, 27, 34;
school; 26; system, 24–25, 28, 33,
35, 38, 38n2, 3
race, ix, xi, 39–41, 103–104, 114, 116,
121, 123, 126, 129, 138, 139, 155.
See also, mixed-race; critical race
studies, 146; Japanese, 8; Ryukyuan,
8; racialization, 39–43, 54, 103,
112; recruitment, 40, 44, 46–47, 53,
55, 61; regional autonomy, 59–79;
debates, 60
Rekidai hōan, 13
Rekishi chiri, 12
reversion, xii-xiii, 11, 17, 36–37, 51,
59–60, 63–79, 98, 128, 144, 149,
151; agreement, 60, 67–68, 70–71,
75, 151; campaign, 151; debates on,
xiii; era, xiii, 12, 59, 76; movement,
37, 59, 69; period of, 78; post-, 67,
74, 155, 163; process, 59–60, 63, 65
Ri, Mae Hyang, 95
Ryukyu, x, 4, 10, 12–14, 16–18, 63,
65–66, 70; annexation of, 6–7, 79n2.
See also, annexation; archipelago, i.
See also, Ryukyu Islands; Bank, 73;
Cultural Affairs Association, 4, 15;
discourse on, 2; disposition of, xi,
68, 79n2; government, 70; Islands,
3, 11, 13–14, 18, x, xi, xiii, xv, 151;
Kingdom, x, xi, vii, x–xi, 3–4, 18,
68, 150, 166n8; king, 3, 13; Nation,
75; policeman, 151; political figure
of, 6; Republic, 65
Ryukyu-American Friendship Day, 5
Ryūkyū shinpō, 14, 21
Ryūkyū shobun. See, disposal of the
Kingdom of Ryukyu
190
Index
Ryukyuan, x, 5, 8–10, 12–14, 18,
19n2, 65, 82; affairs, 20; arts and
crafts, 4; cowardliness, 9; culture, 7;
diplomatic documents, 13; economy,
9; foreign relations, 13; heritage,
5–8, 13; history, x, 2–3, 5–6, 8,
13, 15, 18–19, 19n1; identity, 2.
See also, identity; king, 12. See
also, Ryukyu King; language, 6;
nation, 64–66; officers, 6; officials,
6–7; people, 16; race, 8. See also,
race; religion, 16; royal descent, 9;
scholars, 13; statehood, xi; studies,
15; topography, 13; trade, x;
tributary relation, 3; verses, 6. See
also, Omoro sōshi.
Sai On, x, 2–3–6, 8–9, 19n3
Sakiyama Tami, xiv, 122–133, 137–140,
146, 147n2
Sandler, Richard, 161
San Francisco Peace Treaty. xii, 36, 42,
See also, Treaty of Peace with Japan
Satō Eisaku, 63
Satsuma, 3–5, 9–10, 13, 16, 18, 42. See
also, Shimazu; clan, 13; daimyō, x;
domain, 3–4, 65; invasion, 6, 16, 18
Self-Defense Forces (SDF), 74, 151
Shabazz, Jamel, 161
Shikiya Kōshin, 3–5
Shimabuku Annmaria, 110
Shimabukuro Jun, 77–78
Shimabukuro Zenpatsu, x, 2–5, 8–19,
19n2, n4, n5
Shimabukuro-Higashionna debate, 12
Shimazu; clan, 42; lord, 3
Shinjō Anzen, 6
Shō Joken, x, 2, 6, 8–11, 13–14, 16, 18,
19n5
Shō Kei, x, 4, 19n3
Shuri; x; casttle, 5, 7; family, 32
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 164
Scientific Investigations of the Ryukyu
Islands (SIRI), 1, 2; conference, 6,
14
Society of Hitotsubo anti-war Land
Owners, 85, 91, 100n1
Sōenji Temple, 7
Sontang, Susan, 157
South Asia, xiii
South China Seas, 5
South Korea, vii, xiii, 81, 84, -6, 88,
90–100, 122, 151; activists in, 90,
94; anti-base activism in, 85; antibase activities in, See anti-U.S. base
activities; anti-base struggle in, 91,
94–; army, 93; government of, 90;
Incheon, 98; Jeju Island, 81, 95;
men, 86; military regime in, 93;
people’s, 69, 75; politics of, 92;
resident in, 75; residual, 20n10, 54;
society of, 91–92; sovereignty, x, xi,
xiv, 1, 13, 18, 60, 78, 110, 112; U.S.
military bases in. See, U.S. military
bases; women’s experience in, xiii
special autonomous body, 66, 70–71, 76
special autonomous region, 68, 72, 76
Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA),
51, 54, 155
Sturken, Marita, 132
Suh Sung, 92
Supreme Commander for the Allied
Powers (SCAP), 14, 61
Taira Kōji, 64, 70, 79
Taiwan, 84
Takaesu, Maria, 128
Takamori, Ayako, 153
Takara Ben, 59
Takara Kurayoshi, x, 19n7
Takeuchi, Keiichi, 162
Tametomo legend, 13
Tanji Miyume, 82
Tasato Osamu, 19n5
third-country nationals (TCNs), 39–56,
56n2,
Tokyo Imperial University, 6, 10, 12
Tōmatsu Shōmei, 152
Tomiyama Ichirō, 42
Tomiyama Masahiro, 85, 88
Index
transnational, ix, xi, xv, 82–83, 103,
106, 108, 114, 116–117, 139,
146, 149–150; alliances, 82, 103;
anti-base movement, 100, See antiU.S. base activities; anti-colonial
campaining, 82, 154; cooperation,
100; feminist, 152; imaginings, 104;
kinship ties, 105; movement, xii,
137; networks, xiii, 84, 99; political
alliances, 126; solidarity movement,
97, 100; transnationalism, 103, 105,
114, 117
Treaty of Peace with Japan, xii, xvn1,
11, 20n10, 36, 42
Trinh T. Minh-Ha, 121, 126, 145–6
Trovillot, Michel, 122
tuberculosis, 21, 24, 29, 34–36
Uehara-Carter, Mitzi, 113, 163, 166n4
Ueunten, Wesley, 160
United Kingdom, 81
United States Civil Administration of
the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR), xiv,
1–3, 10, 14–15, 17, 21–38, 38n2,
45, 47
United States Forces, 42; in Japan
(USFJ), 40
University of the Ryukyus, 66, 68,
76–77, 92, 147n2,
U.S. Department of Defense, vii
U.S. Empire, 22, 34; U.S. 5th Air Force,
84; U.S. 7th Fleet, 84; U.S. 8th
Army, 97
U.S.-Japan peace treaty, 11,
U.S. Occupation Forces, 40, 49
USCAR. See United States Civil
Administration of the Ryukyu
Islands
191
U.S. military bases, ix, xii, xiii; anti-.
See anti-U.S. base activities; Camp
Hansen, 154, 156; Camp Koza, 131;
Clark Air base, 89–90; Futenma, 89,
97–8; in Atsugi, 97; in Germany,
vii; in Guam, 122; in Hokkaido, 97;
in Japan, vii, 122; in Okinawa, vii,
ix–xii, 122; in Philippines, 122; in
South Korea. Vii, 84, 90, 122, 150;
in Yongsan, 197; Kadena Airforce
base. 52, 89, 96, 155–56; Yokosuka,
95, 97
U.S. military installations, 39–40, 46,
50, 56
VD control, 28–30
Vietnam War, 28, 85, 89, 132, 151, 153,
160, 164; anti-, 82, 160
Watterworth, Juanita A., 24–28,
32–33
World War II, x, xii, 45, 59, 69, 84–86,
105, 149–150, 154
Yakabi Osamu, 9, 12, 19n5
Yokohama Art Museum, 151
Yonaha Jun, 19n4
Yanbaru, 81
Yonahara Setsuko, 26–27
Yuichiro, Onishi, 82–83
Yuk Young-soo, 94
“Yun Geum-I case,” 90
zainichi Koreans, See mixed-race
identities
Zohar, Ayelet, 155–6, 167n20
1955–system, 62
About the Editors and Contributors
Pedro Iacobelli is Assistant Professor in the Institute of History at Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile. He obtained his MA in East Asia Studies and
Phd in History from the Australian National University and has published
on historical migration, transnational connections, Asia-Latin American
relations and Cold War politics in the Asia-Pacific region. He co-edited
Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration and Social Movements
(2016) and authored Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and
the Ryukyu Islands (2017).
Ariko S. Ikehara earned her Ph.D. in the Department of Ethnic Studies at
the University of California, Berkeley in 2016, based on interdisciplinary
study and research in comparative colonial and decolonial literary studies,
translation studies, and performance studies. Currently, she is a JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Graduate School of Human
Sciences, School of Human Sciences at Osaka University. She is also part
of a new cutting-edge initiative called The Workshop on Blackness and the
Asian Century (BASIC), founded at UC Irvine through the auspices of the
UC Consortium of Black Studies in California, a multi-campus program and
research initiative.
Laura Kina is Vincent de Paul Professor of Art, Media, & Design and Director of Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul University, co-editor of Queering
Contemporary Asian American Art (2017), co-editor War Baby/Love Child:
Mixed Race Asian American Art (2013), co-founder of the Critical Mixed
Studies conference and association, and a reviews editor for the Asian Diasporic Visual Culture in the Americas. Her solo exhibitions include Uchinanchu, Blue Hawaiʻi, Sugar, A Many-Splendored Thing, Aloha Dreams, and
Hapa Soap Operas.
193
194
About the Editors and Contributors
Asako Masubuchi is a Ph.D candidate at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. Her thesis explores the correlation between militarism and politics of life, through examining policies, practices, and discourses
on medicine and social welfare in U.S.-occupied Okinawa. She is author of
“‘Hachigatsu jūgoya no chaya’ wo meguru manazashi no seijigaku (The Politics of the Perspectives surrounding ‘The Teahouse of the August Moon’)”
in Senryō-sha no manazashi, edited by Yasuhiro Tanaka, pp. 14–38 (2013).
Hiroko Matsuda has received a doctoral degree from the Australian National
University, and is currently an associate professor of Kobe Gakuin University in Japan. Her publications include “Becoming Japanese in the Colony:
Okinawan Migrants in Colonial Taiwan” Cultural Studies 26:5 (2012), and
“Whose Home? Cultural Pluralism and Preservation of Japanese Colonial
Heritage in Taipei City,” in Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities in Transitory
Moments of Trade, Colonialism, and nationalism, edited by Wasana Wongsurawat (2016). She is the author of Liminality of Japanese Empire: Border
Crossings from Okinawa to Colonial Taiwan (forthcoming).
Hidekazu Sensui is a professor of cultural anthropology at Kanagawa University, specializing the ethnography of the Ryukyu Islands. He has written
extensively on the history of field sciences in the occupied Japan and its
former colonies. He has recently co-authored Nihonha donoyōni katararetekitaka—kaigai no bunkajinruigakuteki, minzokugakuteki Nihonkenkyū
[How Japan Has Been Narrated: Overseas Cultural Anthropological and
Folkloristic Studies of Japan] (2016) and Teikoku wo shiraberu—shokuminchi fuiirudowaaku no kagakushi [Doing Research in an Empire: a History of
Scientific Fieldwork in the Colonies] (2016).
Shinnosuke Takahashi is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Global
Human Sciences, Kobe University. He has completed a doctoral degree at
the Australian National University in December 2016 with his Ph.D. thesis
on social, cultural and political activism and formation of protest identities
in Okinawa. He is one of the co-editors of Transnational Japan as History:
Empire, Migration and Social Movements (2016).
Ayako Takamori is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary and Applied
Liberal Arts at Marylhurst University in Marylhurst, Oregon. She received
a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from New York University in 2011
with a graduate certificate in Culture and Media. From 2011–2013, she was
a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science/SSRC Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the University of Tokyo, Komaba. Her article “Henna Nihongo
About the Editors and Contributors
195
(Strange Japanese): On the Linguistic Baggage of Racial Strangeness” was
published in 2015 in the Journal of Japanese Language and Literature. She
has also published in Critical Asian Studies. She is currently completing her
book, Traversing Borders: Japanese American Transpacific Positionings.
Ryan Masaaki Yokota is currently serving as a lecturer in East Asian History at DePaul University, having received his Ph.D. in East Asian (Japanese) History at the University of Chicago following the completion of his
dissertation “Postwar Okinawan Nationalism(s): Independence, Autonomy,
and Indigenousness, 1945–2008.” His recent academic publications include
an article titled “The Okinawan (Uchinānchu) Indigenous Movement and
Its Implications for Intentional/International Action,” published in Amerasia
Journal; and a chapter titled “Ganbateando: The Peruvian Nisei Association
and Okinawan Peruvians in Los Angeles,” published in the edited volume
Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific. Having
engaged with Okinawan political issues for over two decades, he has been
featured in articles and op-eds on a range of East Asian and Asian American
issues on BBC Radio, the Japan Times, the Ryuˉkyuˉ Shimpoˉ, the Rafu Shimpo,
and Metropolis Magazine.
Johanna O. Zulueta is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of
International Liberal Arts, Soka University, Tokyo. She received her Ph.D.
from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and has published on Japan-Philippines migrations, mainly looking at base workers and war brides. Her recent
publications include Japan: Migration and a Multicultural Society (edited
with Lydia Yu Jose) (2014) and “When Death Becomes Her Question:
Death, Identity, and Perceptions of Home among Okinawan Women Return
Migrants,” in Mortality: Promoting the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and
Dying (2016). She is currently working on a monograph on elderly Okinawan
war brides. Her current research interests are on end-of-life perceptions of aging migrants, retirement migration, and the new Chinese migration.