Chapter 16 The Endless Postwar: Okinawa at the Modern Frontier (original) (raw)

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Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences, 2024

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.

Making Sense of Diasporic Okinawan Identity within US Global Militarisation

2015

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...

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International Conference on Asian Studies, 2019

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.'

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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...

EFFORTS TO GENERATE A NEW WAVE OF OKINAWAN RESISTANCE

8th International Conference on Asian Studies, 2019

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.'