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Following on from the spring issue, we are proud to present the second part of our special section on postwar images of Okinawa. This two-part special section comes at an apt time, for next year witnesses the fiftieth anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. For Okinawans, the reversion was a massive historical event that marked the end of the US military’s twenty-seven-year occupation of the islands since the end of the Pacific War. The transition of sovereignty had a significant impact on the islanders’ social life, from the change of currency to the switching of car lanes from the right to the left on 30 July 1978, which, not so surprisingly, resulted in a number of accidents. However, to the disappointment of many locals, the military bases stayed on the islands, in accordance with the treaty of mutual cooperation and security between the two countries. The barbed-wire fences of the bases are still a prominent feature of the Okinawan landscape, with approximately 15 percent of the main island still occupied by the US. The islanders’ antipathy, or at least ambivalence, toward the reversion and its consequences has often been swamped by the celebratory images of the exotic islands from mainland Japan. Thus, when viewing films and TV series set in Okinawa, or those featuring Okinawa as their topic, one needs to pay attention not only to what is being shown but also to what remains invisible, lurking in the margins of representation.
Although the articles compiled here are not intended to draw a comprehensive picture of the complex power relations of Okinawa, Japan and the US as manifested in the cinematic representations of the islands, it is our hope that these articles, along with those in the first issue, throw critical light on the postwar visual history of Okinawa. Takuya Tsunoda’s article focuses on Japanese New Wave filmmaker Hani Susumu’s 1958 educational short film The Living Sea (Umi wa ikiteiru). Drawing on the concept of dispositif, Tsunoda strategically analyses the composition and decoupage of film images, as well as the reflexivity between the aquarium and film viewing situations. He demonstrates that Hani’s film, shot on Hateruma and Ishigaki Islands under the US military occupation, contributes to the knowledge construction of Japan’s periphery in the cultural infrastructure of postwar Japan, while avoiding a simplistic dichotomy of Okinawa versus mainland Japan. Moving from occupation to post-occupation, Patrick Chimenti examines media responses to the reversion in the leftist filmmaking group Nihon Documentarist Union’s documentary film Asia Is One (Ajia wa hitotsu, 1973) and Okinawan playwright Chinen Seishin’s stage production Human Pavilion (Jinruikan, 1976). Approaching the biopolitical regime in postwar Okinawa and in particular the post-reversion Okinawan identity, Chimenti develops an idea of ‘im/mobility’ to reconsider the flow and movement (or the lack thereof) of subjects within and beyond certain ethnocultural spheres. Also, ‘im/mobility’ is used to examine the film and the play (and its performance on stage) as visual media configurations of affectivity and performativity. As such, the case studies reveal the filmmaker’s and the playwright’s reworking of the dominant Japanese media discourse that sought to construct a post-reversion Okinawan identity along the lines of Japanese ethnonationalism. Along with the articles in the spring issue, these two research articles offered multifaceted, transmedial approaches to rethink American and Japanese hegemony over Okinawa.
For this special section, we have also expanded the understanding of cinema by conducting an extensive interview with Okinawan visual artist Chikako Yamashiro. Since the early 2000s, Yamashiro has been active in photography and video art, persistently addressing such issues as war experience, memory, history, and the current geopolitical predicaments of Okinawa in relation to other Asian locales from the intersectional perspectives of gender, body, and affect. In the interview, we trace Yamashiro’s days as an art student in the UK and her unforgettable encounter with the art of cinema, and survey her significant breakthrough as a filmmaker and video artist, discussing such major works as the video piece Your Voice Came Out Through My Throat (Anata no koe wa watashi no nodo wo tōtta, 2009) and her recent short film Reframing (Rifurēmingu, 2021). We are grateful to Yamashiro and her representatives, Yumiko Chiba Associates, for facilitating an exciting conversation and for permission to publish its English translation for the readers of this journal.
Throughout our editing process, we have benefited from the support and encouragement of many experts in Okinawan studies, including critic Isao Nakazato, who granted us permission to publish the English translation of his essay in the spring issue. Without such support, this special section would certainly not have been possible. In particular, we would like to express our utmost gratitude to Mayumo Inoue for his assistance in both issues of our special section.
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Notes on contributors
Kosuke Fujiki
Kosuke Fujiki is Lecturer in English Linguistics at Okayama University of Science. He earned his PhD in Film Studies at King’s College London, where he completed his thesis on the post-reversion Okinawan cinema. His research interests include contemporary East Asian cinemas, film adaptation, and the representation of memory and history in cinema.
Ran Ma
Ran Ma is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests include East Asian independent cinemas and film festival studies. Ma is the author of Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2019).