Okinawa as an Intersection of Colonialisms: Toward Creating a Place Open to and Interconnecting with Asia

Abstract

The aftermath of 9.11, along with the Fukushima disaster, has once again highlighted the continuities of colonialism and of Cold War political culture in East Asia, shedding light also on the peculiar economy of simultaneous annexation and exclusion prevalent throughout modern Okinawan history. Integrated for many years into the Japanese Emperor state and assimilated to Japan, Okinawa was nevertheless sacrificed for the sake of Japanese sovereignty and was surrendered to US control—the flipside of post-war Japan's demilitarization and democratization. The assimilationist movement within Okinawa, supporting the 1972 reversion to Japanese administration, merely resulted in the perpetuation of US military occupation and of subordination to Japanese nationalism, thereby undermining the formation of Okinawa as a historical subject. This essay revisits the “anti-reversion” ideas that emerged at the time as a critique of this history of (re-)annexation and assimilation. It is argued here that because of Okinawa's contradictory experience and ambivalent position as an “internal border,” implying the notion of resistance as well as encounter, the island may constitute a site connecting those Asian peoples who have experienced colonialism and occupation. Okinawa's experience may therefore point toward an alternative decolonization of Asia that transcends the anti-colonial struggle for independence and the idea of sovereignty.

Keywords:

• Okinawa
• colonialism
• US military occupation
• system of sacrifice
• anti-reversion
• internal border
• Asia as method

Notes

¹The term “unsinkable aircraft carrier” was supposedly first used by former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro during his 1983 visit to the US to describe Japan's role in a confrontation with the Soviet Union (as quoted in Hook et al. 2005, 418).

²The Martial Arts Hall constructed for the 1964 Olympics.

³Ukai argues that instead of contrasting Fichte and Renan, or even portraying the one as “essentialist” and therefore a dangerous nationalist and the other as non-essentialist and hence an integrationist precursor of multiculturalism, one may rather identify a basic commonality in both, since both stipulate specific “nations” on the basis of a universal definition of “humanity.” According to Ukai, this common “national humanism” constitutes the “limit” of the idea of the nation as it has transpired in Western modernity.

⁴The term koyū no ryōdo is used by the Japanese government in the context of territorial disputes with Russia, South Korea and China. As it is a peculiar notion not defined by international law, it has been variously rendered as “inherently integral territory,” “traditional Japanese territory,” “integral part of our Japanese territory,” etc. “Inherent territory” or “inherent part of the territory of Japan” are translations to be found in sources of the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nakazato Isao

Translated by Robin Weichert