BECOMING “JAPANESE” IN BOLIVIA: OKINAWAN-BOLIVIAN TRANS(NATIONAL)FORMATIONS IN COLONIA OKINAWA¹

1. The title is inspired by Ichirō Tomiyama’s classic work on Okinawan émigrés in Osaka and Leo Ching’s groundbreaking study of Taiwanese subjectivity under Japanese colonial rule (Tomiyama 1990; Ching 2001).

Abstract

This article chronicles the changing subject-positions of Okinawans in Bolivia from the 1950s to 1990s, who migrated to Colonia Okinawa, an agricultural settlement in the eastern Santa Cruz region, as sponsored migrants backed by the United States military administration and the Okinawan (Ryūkyū) government. Since the forced annexation of Okinawa by Imperial Japan in 1879, Okinawans and the Okinawan Diaspora have often been discriminated against by the Japanese government and the immigrants from mainland Japan as illegitimate Japanese national subjects. The lack of active intervention by the Japanese government and the virtual absence of Japanese mainlanders in the settlement, however, enabled the Okinawan settlers to maintain their Okinawan cultural identities and practices without being questioned about their legitimacy as Japanese. Underscored by their socioeconomic success as large-scale farm owners who employed the locals as inexpensive laborers, the settlers gradually shifted their primary identification from “Okinawan” to “Japanese” in the particular social contexts of Colonia Okinawa. The settlers’ concern about their children’s cultural assimilation into the local Bolivian population led them to stress the Japanese-Bolivian polarity, while relegating the troubled history between Japan and Okinawa into the background. As a result, Okinawans in Colonia Okinawa, despite their status as formerly colonized subjects under Imperial Japan, “became” Japanese—vis-à-vis local Bolivians—without culturally becoming as one.

Key Words:

• postcolonial subjectivity
• Okinawan diaspora
• transmigration
• Bolivia

Acknowledgments

I thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions to the earlier version of the article. I also thank Dr. Thomas Wilson and Dr. Jonathan Hill, the editors of Identities, for their assistance and patience.

Notes

1. The title is inspired by Ichirō Tomiyama’s classic work on Okinawan émigrés in Osaka and Leo Ching’s groundbreaking study of Taiwanese subjectivity under Japanese colonial rule (Tomiyama 1990; Ching 2001).

2. “Dekasegi” literally means one who “goes out” to earn money, with the intention of returning home in the future. The term originally referred to workers from rural areas of Japan who domestically migrate to cities in search of work (Tsuda 2003: xii). See Suzuki (2003) and Tsujimoto (1999) for a comprehensive study of dekasegi migration of Okinawan-Bolivians from Colonia Okinawa to Japan.

3. Whether Okinawan is a dialect of Japanese or a linguistically distinct language has long been debated among scholars. Although the Okinawan language remains virtually incomprehensible to the mainlanders of Japan, most of the words used are the same (Molasky 2003: 165). The major difference is the number of vowels used. In Japanese there are five vowels: a, i, u, e, and o; in Okinawa only three are used: a, i, and o. As a result, same words are pronounced differently in the two languages (e.g., te [té, hand] in mainland Japanese is ti in Okinawan). In addition, there are many consonants used in the Okinawan language which do not exist in modern Japanese, as well as some verbs that have a unique set of conjugations, which differ from their mainland counterparts, and some adjectives that are not found today in mainland Japanese (Barrell and Tanaka 1997: 135; Kerr 1958: xvii, 34). Likewise, any effort to refer to Okinawa in relation to the rest of Japan proves to be tenuous. Ryūkyū is more commonly used than Okinawa when signifying geographic and cultural phenomena prior to the Japanese Meiji government’s annexation of the islands. Because Ryūkyū was preferred by the United States military administration during the postwar occupation in their effort to justify the legal separation of the islands from the rest of Japan, some Okinawans today seem uncomfortable with the term (Molasky 2003: 186). Many Okinawans resolve this problem by resorting to Okinawan dialectical terms, Uchināguchi for Okinawan language and Uchinanchu for Okinawan people, as opposed to Yamatoguchi for “standard” Japanese and Yamato or Yamatonchu for the people of mainland Japan. In this article I use Naichi, which literally means “inner land,” the non-dialectical term commonly used by Okinawans, to refer to the four major islands of Japan. Although the term is sometimes used to refer to the residents of Naichi (Toyama and Ikeda 1981), I use the term Naichi-jin, “people of Naichi,” to refer to the Naichi residents of Japan in order to distinguish the geographical areas and demographic groups.

4. Molasky notes that the term Uchinanchu, or Uchinā, tends to be “inflected with a sense of exclusivity” that is not well suited for a scholarly work, especially when written in English (Molasky 2003: 186). In referring to themselves, Okinawans use various terms like Okinawajin (Okinawans), Okinawa kenmin (people of Okinawa Prefecture), Ryūkyūjin (Ryūkyūans), and Uchinanchu. During my fieldwork in Colonia Okinawa, most Issei interviewees referred to themselves as Nihonjin (Japanese), but used terms like Uchinanchu or Okinawa no hito or Okinawa no ningen (person/people of Okinawa) when they meant to highlight the unique cultural and historical backgrounds of Okinawa vis-à-vis Naichi.

5. According to a survey conducted in 1996, 66 percent of the Issei respondents said they were very confident in their listening comprehension of the Japanese language, while 56 percent considered themselves very competent speakers. As for Spanish, only 1 percent of the Issei respondents were confident in their listening competency in Spanish, and none considered him/herself able to speak Spanish very well. In the same survey, 62 and 53 percent of the Nisei respondents were very confident in their listening comprehension and speaking abilities in Spanish, respectively, while only 28 and 21 percent expressed strong confidence in their listening comprehension and speaking abilities in Japanese, respectively (Anbo et al. 1998: 241–3, 246).

6. As many feminist and “halfie” anthropologists have pointed out, ethnographers cannot simply discard or change their personal identities within the particular power dynamics of the field (Behar 1995; Kondo 1986; Narayan 1993). In Colonia Okinawa, I was regarded as Japanese Naichi-jin by Okinawan-Bolivians. I believe that embodied signs of my Naichi-jin identity, such as my surname and speech, influenced, to varying degrees and in different ways, my interaction with Issei and Nisei interviewees: On one hand, as one’s connection to Japan—perceived or real—functioned as symbolic capital in Colonia Okinawa, the interviewees might have been tempted, if not compelled, to over-identity with “Japanese” identity in front of a Naichi-jin interviewer. On the other hand, as the longtime residents of Bolivia facing a student researcher from Japan, they eagerly shared their “native” knowledge about Bolivian society with me. Therefore, I reiterate that my argument in this article, that the Okinawan settlers came to position themselves as Japanese without relinquishing Okinawan cultural practices, is only one aspect of the Okinawan settlers’ subjectivity, rather than a uniform psychological process experienced by the all community members.

7. Angst (2003: 152) argues that Okinawa has been represented by Okinawan intellectuals as “a sacrificed or prostituted daughter” within Japanese family state.

8. For instance, although the cultural and linguistic assimilation policies were still enforced in school education in Okinawa, it took decades after the Ryūkyū Annexation before Okinawa Prefecture was given the equal congressional representation as other prefectures in Naichi (Oguma 1998: ch. 5).

9. Bhabha’s original formulation of colonial mimicry represents the moment of both grave predicament and potential resistance for the colonized in the face of the colonizers, but in the context of Okinawa under the Meiji regime, it would be problematic to highlight the resistive potential in Okinawans’ ambiguous subject-position.

10. From the 1970s, second- and third-generation Okinawan-Brazilians began to revitalize Okinawan culture, such as folk songs written in Uchināguchi, karate, and traditional dance, in their communities (Mori 2003: 59).

11. During the battle, Japanese Imperial Army officers charged a number of Okinawans with espionage when they conversed in Uchināguchi, the language the Naichi-jin officers did not understand. They not only executed the accused but also forced many other civilians to commit suicides, rather than to surrender to U.S. forces. See Allen (2003), Field (1993), and Ota (1999) for details.

12. It is reported that the minimum wage for American employees at United States bases was fourteen times higher than that of the Okinawan workers (Oguma 1998: 504).

13. In a survey conducted by Nakayama et al. (1986: 45), approximately 10 percent of Issei in Colonia Okinawa stated that their dislike of living under U.S. occupation, particularly working for the U.S. military, was a major reason for their emigration.

14. The Japan Communist Party became active in the anti-United States base movement in the late 1950s, but among Issei in ColoniaOkinawa I interviewed, no one was actively involved in anti-base politics. For the Japan Communist Party’s involvement with anti-United States. base activism in Okinawa, see Oguma (1998: Ch. 5).

15. “Uruma” is an ancient name for the Ryūkyū Islands in the archaic Okinawan language. “Uru” means coral leaf, and “ma” means “in between.”

16. Due to the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR, the National Revolutionary Movement) government’s insufficient agrarian land reform and mismanagement of the national mining corporation in the 1950s, there were a large number of landless peasants and unemployed miners in altiplano (Stearman 1985: 30). The government encouraged them to migrate to the eastern lowland and to start horticulture, but many failed to establish self-sufficient farming operations and, instead, became farm laborers. For detailed studies of the domestic migration and settlement projects, see Gill (1987), Hiraoka (1972), Tigner (1954), Mori (1998a).

17. For studies of Colonia San Juan de Yapacaní, see Kunimoto (1986, 1990) and Boribia Nihonjin 100-shūnen-shi Hensan Iinkai (2000).

18. Officials from the Ryūkyū government negotiated with the Bolivian and the United States governments to meet some of the Okinawan settlers’ needs, such as securing a water supply and improving roads in the village. Ijū (1987), the first director of the Ryūkyū government office in Colonia Okinawa, chronicled his struggles to negotiate with many national and international agencies to help the Okinawan settlers.

19. Naichi-jin settlers in Colonia San Juan de Yapacaní and Okinawan settlers in Colonia Okinawa had had very little contact until the 1990s, when the highway between Colonia Okinawa and the village of Yapacaní, near Colonia San Juan, was paved, and a telephone system installed in both colonias. Boribia Nikkei Kyōkai Rengōkai (Federación Nacional de Asociaciones de Boliviano-Japonesas: FENABOJA), a federation of the regional Bolivian Nikkeijin associations, was formed in 1996. In 2000, approximately 14,000 Nikkeijin lived in Bolivia, among whom 2,300 resided in the Santa Cruz region (Boribia Nihonjin 100-shūnen-shi Hensan Iinkai 2000).

20. As I noted, the first settlers arrived in Colonia Uruma in August 1954. After struggles with epidemics and poor soil hydration in the first two locations, the settlers finally moved into the current Colonia Okinawa location in 1956. Hence the “second” anniversary of the foundation of Colonia Okinawa was held in 1958 (Ijū 1987: 253).

21. The United States government played a significant role in promoting the development of agricultural enterprise in the Santa Cruz region. The United States considered that the new Bolivian government, led by MNR must become reformist, rather than leftist, and sought to maintain Bolivia within its sphere of influence in the face of the potential communist influence in South America (Gill 1987: 36). Bolivia was the recipient of the largest amount of financial aid from the United States among all South American countries from 1945 to 1964 (Uehara 1981: 67).

22. There have been numerous disputes between Okinawan-Bolivians and local Bolivians over farmland ownership. After the MNR government issued the Agrarian Reform laws, landless peasants and their unions (sindicatos) could acquire the land legally owned by others without purchasing it, if the land had been previously unused. Many sindicatos near Colonia Okinawa entered into the uncultivated land originally allocated to Okinawan settlers by the government and declared its ownership. Those Okinawan settlers whose land was overtaken by the sindicatos negotiated, often unsuccessfully, with the Bolivian government to regain ownership (Amemiya 1999b).

23. See Stearman (1985) for analysis of the relationship between the lowlanders, who referred to themselves as Camba, and the immigrant highlanders in the region, often called Kolla.

24. Since the planned immigration ended in 1964, there have been a small number of voluntary immigrants coming from both Okinawa and Naichi. From 1985 to 1995, JICA also sent to Colonia Okinawa thirteen young Japanese who were interested in immigrating to Bolivia through the Overseas Development Youth program. The selected participants were trained in farming and/or other useful skills for living in their migratory destinations and were expected to settle permanently in the accommodating communities after three years. Among those who had come to Colonia Okinawa, however, only three still lived there in 2003.

25. Although school education began soon after the settlers’ arrival, there was no systematic Japanese education during the 1950s. From the 1960s to 1980s, the schools in Colonia were run by Catholic and Protestant (Methodist) missionaries, both of whom founded churches in Colonia Okinawa in 1959. For detailed studies of school education in Colonia Okinawa, see Mori (1998b), Kasuya (1998), and Suzuki (2003).

26. See Mori (1998a) and Suzuki (2003: Ch. 4) for Okinawan settlers’ stereotyping of local Bolivians. Many Okinawan-Bolivians relocated to the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, or sent their children to live with their relatives living in the city, to provide better education for children. This trend still continued during my fieldwork from 1997 to 2000.

27. In 2000, the CBJ school charged $30 a month for the students who attended the morning Spanish classes only, and $50 for those who took both Spanish and Japanese classes, which made the school unaffordable for the low-income Bolivians.

28. Actual functions of CBJ school education are far more complex than what the school slogans may suggest. See Suzuki’s analysis (2003: Ch. 4) of representations and interpretations of Japanese-ness, Okinawan-ness, and Bolivian-ness by teachers, parents, and students at the school.

29. The household income of local Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa is my estimation based on interviews with both Okinawan-Bolivian employers and local Bolivian employees.

30. Needless to say, my intention is not to downplay the tremendous effort Okinawan settlers made to overcome numerous difficulties. I would simply like to point out that Okinawan-Bolivians and local Bolivians never had the equal access to resources.

31. The program places volunteer public school teachers from Okinawa in the two community schools in Colonia Okinawa each for a two-year term.

32. Though the language spoken in the south-central part of Okinawa Hontō Island is considered the “standard” Uchināguchi, there are many regional variations. Those Issei who immigrated from peripheral Nakijin village or Kudaka Island told me that they found they needed to adjust to the “standard” Uchināguchi spoken in Colonia.

33. In some of the rural Nikkeijin communities in Peru, where Okinawan-Peruvians have been the majority of the community’s population, Okinawan cuisine has come to represent authentic “Japanese” food. See Yamawaki (1996).

34. “Bolivian” culture in Colonia Okinawa, of course, is by no means homogenous. Okinawan-Bolivians and local Bolivians both acknowledged the diversity within “Bolivians” in term of class, culture, and even phenotype, but the Japanese-Bolivian dichotomy seemed to override all other distinctions. Regarding ethnic diversity in Colonia Okinawa and the Santa Cruz region, see Mori (1998a, 1998c) and Stearman (1985).

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Nichibo Kyōkai (Okinawa Nihon-Boribia Kyōkai) 1998a. 1998 nendo yosan-sho

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