Abstract
It is the end of the summer of 2015, and Okinawa is once again thrust into the spotlight. Unlike his predecessor, Governor Takeshi Onaga was elected into office in December 2014 on a platform that overtly opposed the expansion of US military bases within Okinawa. Since the end of the Second World War, Okinawa has disproportionately housed the majority of US military installations in Japan, and its people have suffered the consequences – regularly occurring rapes, murders, and other violent crimes committed by US servicemen. However, the central government of Japan insists on keeping the US presence in Okinawa, regardless of whatever anti-US military sentiment that may be brewing among the Okinawan people. Why is this so? Why are the Okinawans treated so indifferently by the central government of Japan? The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’ by Eiji Oguma (professor of sociology, Keio University), translated by Leonie R Stickland (lecturer in Japanese, Murdoch University), gives its readers an insight into the plight of the Okinawans, as well as crucial information on how Okinawa has come to be perceived by Japanese mainlanders.
The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese,’ originally published in 1998 in Japanese, is a sequel to Oguma’s A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images (1995; translated 2002), which examined the formation of the mythical nature of an ethnically homogeneous Japan. Whereas A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images served as a historical analysis of the national psyche, The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’ illustrates how each subset of Japanese society – the Okinawans, the Ainu, the Taiwanese, and the Koreans – was formed, internalized, and subsequently excluded by the elite, as well as the mainland Japanese population. In this volume, Oguma takes up the plight of the Okinawans, and shows that the people of Okinawa are treated as Japanese when it was convenient for the authorities, but are relegated to being an ‘other’ when the central government determined that it was in their best interests to exclude them from being part of the collective Japanese.
The book leads its readers through a thorough historical analysis of how and why Okinawa has been incorporated and actively excluded from ‘the Japanese,’ starting roughly with the Ryukyu disposition of 1879 when the Ryukyu Kingdom was dismantled and the Okinawan prefecture created. However, the ‘1818’ in the title refers to a book published based on a naval survey conducted by the British Navy in 1816 by Basil Hall Chamberlain on Ryukyuan linguistics (p. 74). The central government enacted conscription laws in 1898, which allowed the authorities to use the Okinawan population as a resource, because they were deemed ‘Japanese.’ Such inclusion was short-lived, as merely 24 years from incorporation into the nation, an exhibition in Osaka showed Okinawan prostitutes as Ryukyuan noblewomen (p. 121). Whereas the Lower House Members’ Electoral Law was enacted in 1900, this was not implemented throughout Okinawa until 1919 (p. 60). This dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion continued until 1972, when Okinawa ‘reverted’ back to Japanese administrative governance.
The main premise of the book is that neither the ‘Japanese’ nor the ‘Okinawans’ existed as intrinsic entities, but were socially constructed, supplementing each other through history. Oguma writes, ‘This construction process, however . . . progressed not by excluding “the Okinawans” from “the Japanese,” but amid their inclusion into “the Japanese” ’ (p. 352). When newly formed Meiji Japan felt threatened by Qing China or the encroaching Western imperialists, it moved swiftly to incorporate the Okinawans into ‘the Japanese.’ In the late 20th century, the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty was another facet of this incorporation. Oguma articulates that the relationship between ‘the Okinawans’ and ‘the Japanese’ was never a bilateral matter, but rather a trilateral one – that is, policies of inclusion or exclusion changed with the presentation of a third variable, be that the Chinese, the imperialists, or the Americans.
One limitation of The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’ is the selection of the minority groups Oguma decided to examine as being ‘Japanese but not Japanese.’ Being born and raised in Japan myself as a biracial bilingual, I too have first-hand experience being treated as Japanese but not when it was inconvenient in the eyes of the masses. Likewise, the foreign press has actively covered the recent controversy of a biracial contestant in an international beauty pageant as being treated as ‘not Japanese enough’ by society. It seems that Oguma’s arguments overlook the fact that the samples he selected for this examination – the Okinawans – are not only relative to whatever tripartite theory of identity, but are intrinsically connected with the territorial history of each people. Whether it is the Okinawans, the Ainu, or the Koreans, assimilation and exclusion occur territorially prior to cultural inclusion. Oguma’s case studies and theoretical conceptualization of the formation of self-identity can be strengthened by looking at minority groups traditionally not tied with any territoriality, such as biracial Japanese or the Burakumin. However, this limitation aside, The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’ is highly recommended for both students and scholars. The book is not only a sociological exposé of the transformation of ethnic identities, but rather a thorough historical analysis of the Okinawans previously unavailable in the English language.
Returning to Okinawa of 2015, we can see Oguma’s trilateral conception of what constitutes being ‘the Okinawans,’ and the simultaneous duality of inclusion and exclusion. Whereas the central government and mainland population assert the importance of Okinawa as an integral part of Japanese society, they also seem to regard Okinawa as a separate subspecies of Japan, scoffing at any notion of self-determination that Governor Onaga may assert. A Ryukyuan independence activist once argued, ‘If Japan is calling for the return of Okinawa, it is because it wants Okinawa’s land . . . and not because they are truly worried about the happiness of all the residents of Okinawa’ (p. 307). These statements of Genwa Nakasone of the Okinawa Democratic League eerily echo through our minds, as we watch Tokyo strip Okinawa of its rights once again.