Okinawan Nationalism in the 1981 Shin Okinawa Bungaku Draft Constitution Debates

• In Event: Social Movements and Identity Struggles in Okinawa

Abstract

The 1972 Reversion of Okinawa from U.S. administrative control to Japan seemed to resolve the complex question of Okinawa’s political position in East Asia, ending 27 years of U.S. rule and bringing, in the minds of Japan’s leaders, “the end to the postwar period” and the recovery of an “integral” part of the pre-war nation. Simmering resentments, however, continued to linger in Okinawa, as demonstrated by continuing discussions by activists and intellectuals about the fate of Okinawa’s political position.
Focusing on a period less than a decade after reversion, this paper will address the Okinawa Draft Constitution debates published in the Shin Okinawa Bungaku literary and political journal, which suggested a range of potential configurations for an imagined Okinawan nation. Alternately suggesting positions of nation-state independence, greater regional autonomy, or even the creation of an anarchist inspired non-state for Okinawa, these proposals served as thought-experiments encapsulating an insurgent sense of Okinawan self-determination, and demonstrating that the political debates surrounding Okinawa’s political status remained open to interpretation at a time when the Japanese government deemed such possibilities to have been unequivocally closed.
In conclusion, this presentation will focus on the importance of recovering a sense of Okinawan dissident subjectivity by examining the political ideologies that informed the authors of these drafts, by analyzing the visions they had of the position of ethnic minorities within the modern nation-state system, and by suggesting that the varied positions raised continue to resonate in debates over Okinawan sovereignty and decolonization today.

Author

• Ryan Masaaki Yokota, University of Chicago