Related Papers
Setting Out to Imagine a New Community: Okinawa's Reversion to Japan. In: Hein, Ina; Prochaska-Meyer, Isabelle (eds., 2015): 40 Years Since Reversion. Negotiating the Okinawa Difference in Japan Today. Wien: Japanologie am Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften der Universität Wien. pp. 44-70.
Gabriele Vogt
Two decades after the main islands of Japan regained full sovereignty, Okinawa was added as a new prefecture to the Japanese state. Yet, the ecological, economic and social consequences of the persistent U.S. military presence on the islands to this day have a significant impact on the everyday life of Okinawans, and at many points in Okinawa’s post-war history they sparked sweeping citizens’ protests. This paper studies the citizens’ movement ahead of the reversion of 1972. While marginal in terms of resources, the movement spread and prevailed through innovative strategies of contentious action and based on its strong movement identity, which was framed along a joint historical consciousness of the activists. Taking an Okinawan perspective, this paper discusses why a reversion movement emerged in the first place. Furthermore, which images of this new nation “Japan with Okinawa” were created and represented, and why were they appealing to the people? The milestones of the reversion movement will be examined against the backdrop of an – as will be argued – ultimately failed process of nation building that continues to haunt Okinawa-Japan and Japan-US relations to this day. This study draws on a qualitative content analysis of scholarly works on the issue, historic and recent media coverage, as well as writings by contemporary witnesses in autobiographical and literary genres. In addition to Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities Sidney Tarrow’s take on social movement activism and Peter Katzenstein’s model of norm building in politics provide the analytical basis for this paper.
Imperial Periphery and National Politics: Trajectory of Opposition Movements in Okinawa
The mainstream study of " national politics " figures out weak and minor nations incline to move either radically or ethnicity-center as repressed by immigrant powers. Nevertheless, sub-national politics in Okinawa, also experienced long-term colonization by metropolitan Japan, delivers alternative path toward progressive movements. By comparative historical research, Okinawa sub-national politics evolves through reproduction mechanisms, eventually leads to the progressive turn to connect with international advocacy community. Since World War II, nationalist rivalry in East Asia continues to make security dilemma entrenched. Under American imperium, conservative perspective of Japanese national politics is consolidated. Okinawa's unanticipated progressive turn of national politics implicates new light for East Asian nations to reconcile by progressive dialogue.
Minikomi, no. 82
A Women's World? Contentious Politics and Civil Society in Okinawa
2012 •
Gabriele Vogt
"The year 1995 became known as a landmark year in contemporary Okinawan history. On September 4 that year, three U.S. military personnel raped an Okinawan schoolgirl, twelve years of age. This crime was one of the events that initiated a newly revived island-wide protest movement of Okinawans against the continuous U.S. military presence in the prefecture, which for many years had gone hand in hand with crime rates above national average (Johnson 1999: 116–119; Vogt 2003: 54). I have previously argued that the September gang rape was the one event it took in a series of developments to once again spark a mass-based protest movement in Okinawa (Vogt 2003:52–57). What makes this movement of the late 1990s so special – compared to, for example, the island-wide protest movement (shimagurumi tōsō) of the 1950s or the reversion movement (f*ckkikyō) of the late 1960s – is its character as a multi-issue movement. As such it was able to bundle the mobilizing power and resources available not only to the anti-military and peace groups but also the environmental activists, neighborhood associations and in a most central position the Okinawan women. The accessibility of a contentious policy issue to a broad group of allies, and the sustainable and potentially transnational character of activism around this issue are central features of the so-called new social movements (Melucci 1988: 335–338; Vogt 2006: 289–291). Once contention “produces collective action frames and supportive identities” (Tarrow 1998: 23) new social movements may reach a whole new quality of activism. They may be able to successfully push for their policy goals, and beyond that bring about change in the identity formation of its activists. In the piece at hand I will show that the Okinawan women’s groups stood at the center of the newly emerging protest in the late 1990s and served as key actors when it came to call for policy change based on identity formation within the prefecture. This might seem surprising given the general role of women in Japanese social movements, most often confined to far less contentious policy issues such as, most prominently, food safety (LeBlanc 1999). How then did Okinawan women manage to take on center stage in the mass movement of the late 1990s? What were their goals of activism and how successful were they in pursuing them? I argue that Okinawan women in particu-lar succeeded in two forms of activism: First, they managed to produce “a collective reality” among protesters that went beyond immediate women’s issues “by the convergence and integration of the many elements” (Melucci 1988: 338) the anti-base movement was and to this day is composed of. They, secondly, did so by applying recent forms of activism including the transnationalization of their actions, which allowed them to form a broad support basis and to some degree gain independence from the narrow political opportunity structures Japan’s political system grants to non-traditional political actors."
“Being Okinawan” Within and Beyond the Ethnic Boundary: The Process of Identity Formation in an Okinawan Cultural Activist Group in Osaka
Sumi Cho
International Conference on Asian Studies
International Conference on Asian Studies: EFFORTS TO GENERATE A NEW WAVE OF OKINAWAN RESISTANCE
2019 •
Joseph Pagan
EFFORTS TO GENERATE A NEW WAVE OF OKINAWAN RESISTANCE Since World War II the United States' military, political, and economic influence have remained relatively unchallenged in the Indo-Pacific arena. For decade's Japan and the Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa has hosted tens of thousands of U.S. personnel as part of forward deployed deterrent strategy able to respond to an entire continuum of challenges. Despite the ever-emerging threats in both capacity and capability, the Indo-Pacific area has become the new geopolitical fault line in the battle for regional hegemony. Stuck in the shadows is an interactive struggle for identity, power, and relevance. This effort can be observed firsthand on the Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa, were an enduring Okinawan resistance attempts to generate results and invigorate relevance against current Japanese and American pol-military efforts along a fragile and dynamic fault line of both resolve and influence. This exploratory study examines not only the current securitization and spectrum of current Okinawan resistance efforts that attempt to blunt Japanese and American securitization and posturing on the island, but also the cultivation and synchronization of these efforts meant to specifically mature and advance a unique localized 'identity' and 'burden.'
Between modernity and primitivity: Okinawan identity in relation to Japan and the South Pacific n
2006 •
Kate Barclay
Nations and Nationalism
Between modernity and primitivity: Okinawan identity in relation to Japan and the South Pacific*
2006 •
Kate Barclay
Nationalism in Okinawa:Futenma and the future of base politics
2016 •
Ra Mason
Extant scholarship has primarily tackled the MCAS Futenma base relocation case on Okinawa from specific scientific and economic disciplines, such as International Relations (IR) and Policymaking Studies. This paper, however. provides new research into the relationship between nationalism and localism, offering an original perspective that explains the combined interactive influences affecting the key issues. These include: the constraints and opportunities of the international system, the rhetoric used by political, commercial and societal stakeholders involved in policy direction, and the societal norms that embed shifting national and local interests into the policymaking process. Concretely, it explicates to what extent intersecting key actors disputing the Futenma relocation issue on Okinawa adhere to Japan's national norms of (US_allied) bilateralism, (anti)militarism and developmentalism - and how policy is shaped in accordance with such. The research findings offer a deep...
Eras Journal
The rhetoric of the assimilation ideology in the remote islands of Okinawa: becoming Japanese or Okinawan?
2007 •
Stanisław Meyer
Being seen as peripheries of civilisation, the remote islands of Miyako and Yaeyama suffered from political, social and cultural marginalisation in the Ryukyu Kingdom. With the fall of the kingdom and the establishment of the Okinawa prefecture in 1879, these islands, like other regions in the prefecture, were subjected to the policy of assimilation and ‘Japanisation’. Assimilation was promoted in Okinawa in the name of modernisation and the idea of Japanese culture was closely associated with the notion of modernity and civilisation. Pre-war newspapers in Miyako and Yaeyama demonstrate, however, that the advocates of assimilation skilfully exploited the issue of local identities and complex relations between Okinawa and the remote islands. They encouraged local people to combat their inferiority complex by presenting themselves as more ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’ than Okinawans. Japanese culture was appropriated as a device for negotiating one’s status within Okinawan society, and hence assimilation came to concern the matter of ‘becoming Okinawan’.
8th International Conference on Asian Studies
EFFORTS TO GENERATE A NEW WAVE OF OKINAWAN RESISTANCE
2019 •
Joseph Pagan
EFFORTS TO GENERATE A NEW WAVE OF OKINAWAN RESISTANCE Since World War II the United States' military, political, and economic influence have remained relatively unchallenged in the Indo-Pacific arena. For decade's Japan and the Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa has hosted tens of thousands of U.S. personnel as part of forward deployed deterrent strategy able to respond to an entire continuum of challenges. Despite the ever-emerging threats in both capacity and capability, the Indo-Pacific area has become the new geopolitical fault line in the battle for regional hegemony. Stuck in the shadows is an interactive struggle for identity, power, and relevance. This effort can be observed firsthand on the Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa, were an enduring Okinawan resistance attempts to generate results and invigorate relevance against current Japanese and American pol-military efforts along a fragile and dynamic fault line of both resolve and influence. This exploratory study examines not only the current securitization and spectrum of current Okinawan resistance efforts that attempt to blunt Japanese and American securitization and posturing on the island, but also the cultivation and synchronization of these efforts meant to specifically mature and advance a unique localized 'identity' and 'burden.'
