The Nature of Time and the Nature of Resistance to It: A Study of Okinawan Opposition to Militarization

• In Event: Social Movements and Identity Struggles in Okinawa

Abstract

With the annexation of Okinawa by Meiji Japan in 1879, the American militarization of the island in the wake of WWII, and the neoliberal forms of globalization now holding sway over local public policy, Okinawan people have managed to mount a sustained struggle against the forces presently (re)shaping much of the world. “Waiting” (or the calculated use of time) has been part and parcel of that struggle. What indigenous aspects of Okinawan culture, language, and identity that globalization has failed to reshape or erase, Okinawan people continue to challenge the ongoing U.S. occupation with resistance to western concepts of time imposed upon them through militarization. As George Woodcock observes, if “mechanized time is [a] valuable means of coordinating activities in a highly developed society,” it is also an essential cog in the machinery of this standing army garrisoned on foreign soil. As a relic of traditional agrarian culture, “Okinawa time” today is deployed, if subconsciously, as a soft defense against the neoliberal forces of “gunboat globalization” (Feffer 2000) that prevail upon local society. “Okinawa time” underscores the value of deliberate waiting, of laying siege to the tools of war most apparent in the physical boundaries erected between the local community and the U.S. military population. This paper presents analysis of how this soft defense of waiting in protest at the chain-link fences that surround the U.S. bases has both served to protect the U.S.-led status quo but also created a backlash against current plans to despoil nature in Oura Bay.

Author

• Daniel S. Broudy, Okinawa Christian University