Orientalism, Mass Culture and the US Administration in Okinawa (original) (raw)

1. About a year ago, I travelled to Washington DC as an interpreter with an Okinawan delegation that was making a direct appeal against plans by the US and Japanese governments to push ahead with construction of a new US Marine Air Station on the clear blue waters of Henoko. It felt like a quixotic mission as most of the US officials, think tanks, and politicians we met had made up their mind about new base construction at Henoko saying that it was the best plan for the US-Japan security arrangement and for the security of Pacific Asia. What the delegation was trying to get across to deaf ears was that Okinawans have stopped the construction for eighteen years by placing their bodies in front of ships and equipment coming to start construction. I recall vividly how Itokazu Keiko, the female leader of the delegation, looked straight in the eyes of male officials of Departments of Defense and State, saying that the delegation had come to personally appeal to the American sense of demo...

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.'

How can writing differently help avert denial of agency without sacrificing critique? It is common for critical ir scholarship to construe American bases across the world as legacies of U.S. imperialism. These interventions have facilitated deeper understandings of the asymmetrical relationship between US and its allies, and the impact of military base hosting to ordinary people’s lives. However, their tendency to vilify empire has reproduced US as the main agent of military base politics and framed the host’s agency in terms of active subordination and dependence to the West. In this article, I use an reflexive writing strategy to demonstrate how mainland Japanese and Okinawans have transformed bases into sites of struggles through which they push policy agenda that move beyond being prisoners of American empire.

Alone among Japan's prefectures, Okinawa experienced a 27-year-long military occupation that fundamentally altered its history, and created a distinctive local politics, culture and economy that continue to speak to larger national and global issues. This chapter explores the contingencies that led to Okinawa's wartime and postwar militarization, and the ways Okinawans have actively challenged American and Japanese efforts to control their postwar narrative. Despite persistent grievances regarding a fragile local economy and continued heavy US military base burden, Okinawans have promoted new visions emphasizing the themes of peace and transnational cooperation that meaningfully connect their past to their future.

The Japanese perceptions of Hawai’i and Okinawa today share fundamental similarities: Both postcolonial island chains are appreciated as stereotypical tropical paradises with beautiful beaches and untouched nature, where gentleness (yasashisa) and healing (iyashi) await the visitor. However, although affirmative, such interchangeable images obscure not only the social, economic, and political reality, but also the historically grown oppression. The questions thus arise whether these images are part of cultural discourses of power and whether they follow a conscious or unconscious “neo-imperial” agenda employed to silence subaltern Pacific voices. This paper examines the interwoven structure of the Okinawa boom (200122009) and the “healing boom” (iyashi bumu) in mainland Japan. Locating the two islands in a Pacific framework, statistical data of Okinawa and Hawai’i will be investigated to demonstrate how analogous postcolonial and “neo-imperial” issues actually are. Exemplarily, the NHK television drama Churasan of 2001 and Yoshimoto Banana’s travel diary Nankurunaku, nai (‘What Will Be, Will Not Be’) of 2006 will be investigated with the aim of uncovering trajectories of colonial agency and thus elucidate what political roles mass tourism, its media, and popular agents play in the power framework of “neo-imperial” oppression in the Pacific.