Okinawan Studies

Presentation of the different periods of the Okinawan chronology with mention of the different names they can be referred with both in the Japanese and the western contexts.
This is intended to be partof the introduction of a wider project that will, or will not, include the Sakishima as well. 
Since it can be useful to people needing a quick introduction to Okinawan chronology, I upload it here as a draft for the time being.

TWO-STAGE  (DUAL) FUNERARY RITUAL OF JAPAN AND OKINAWA AS  A CULTURAL MODEL (Abstract of the Ph.D. Thesis)
Pукопись aвторефератa диссертации на соискание ученой степени кандидата культурологии (специальность 24.00.01 – теория и история культуры, культурология).
Работа выполнена в Секторе «Языки культур» Российского института культурологии. Москва, 2005
Научный руководитель: доктор исторических наук А.Н.Мещеряков
Официальные оппоненты:
доктор филологических наук Т.П. Григорьева
доктор культурологии Т.В. Мордовцева
Ведущая организация – Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет

Title: 'Shimakutuba de kataru ikusayu' to 'Maus- Aushuvittsu o ikinobita chichioya no monogatari' no kanōsei
[Japanese language article] In this article I compare the possibilities of representing and narrating the traumatic past, as well as the revealing of the context of recall and narration, in the documentary film about the Battle of Okinawa "Shimakutuba de kataru ikusayu" with the graphic novel "Maus: A Survivor's Tale".

*Disclaimer*
This chapter does not contain any information concerning the archaeological surveys dealt with in this report.
It is a general presentation of a specific field of Okinawan archaeology aimed at non-specialized readers.

Chapter from: Final Report: Archaeological Data Recovery for SOF Airfield Pavement and Roads, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, Feature 11 – Feature 15 – Feature 16 – Feature 21 – Site 3b Contract #W912HV-17-P-0003. Prepared for Kadena Town Board of Education and 718th Civil Engineer Squadron, Environmental Flight (718th CES/CEIE), Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Ocean Division, Japan District (CEPOJ-PP-AE USAEDJ), Camp Zama, Kanagawa, Japan. Ginowan : ARCGEO Inc., 2019.

*Disclaimer*
This chapter does not contain any information concerning the archaeological surveys specifically dealt with in this report.
It is a general presentation of a specific field of Okinawan archaeology aimed at non-specialized readers.

Chapter from: Final Report: Archaeological Data Recovery for SOF Airfield Pavement and Roads, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, Feature 11 – Feature 15 – Feature 16 – Feature 21 – Site 3b Contract #W912HV-17-P-0003. Prepared for Kadena Town Board of Education and 718th Civil Engineer Squadron, Environmental Flight (718th CES/CEIE), Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Ocean Division, Japan District (CEPOJ-PP-AE USAEDJ), Camp Zama, Kanagawa, Japan. Ginowan : ARCGEO Inc., 2019

Introduction: Why an Uchinaguchi Martial Arts Lexicon?

    One of the things that sets practitioners of Okinawan karate and kobudo, and martial arts in general, apart from other athletes is their strong interest in the culture from which their art originates. Many martial artists wish to learn more about the places, people and language of the home country of
their art, and often find themselves hosting teachers from abroad, travelling to their teachers' home countries or even studying additional languages in order to deepen their understanding. However, even as the world-wide practice of traditional Okinawan karate and kobudo has blossomed through the international exchange martial arts travel provides, Okinawan, the primary original language of these
martial arts, has not been transmitted to the next generation. If current language maintenance efforts are unsuccessful, the Okinawan language, including all the martial arts information contained in its nuances and rich vocabulary, will be lost.

    Japanese is frequently used in karate and kobudo practice to refer to techniques, weapons, kata, terms of respect, exercises and even numbers in the dojo. Speaking the Okinawan language in Okinawan karate and kobudo dojo, even within Okinawa, is currently a rare practice, and yet Okinawan
and international dojo provide an ideal place in which the language may be used. By using the original language of Okinawa, karate and kobudo learners would likely gain some insight into the cultural context of Okinawan martial arts practices that would improve their understanding of Okinawan
martial arts techniques. This would not only increase the number and fluency of Uchinaguchi speakers, but also promote awareness of Okinawan language and culture among the martial arts community and members of the general public. Since foreigners and the martial arts occupy a respected place in Okinawan and Japanese society, the usage of Okinawan by Okinawan and international martial artists
would increase the prestige of this language both domestically and internationally, thereby promoting its revitalization.

    In short, this book is for Okinawans who wish to revitalize Uchinaguchi, and also for the international community of karate and kobudo practitioners and others with an appreciation of Okinawan culture and language. The more reasons people have for using Okinawan now, the greater
the likelihood that traditional Okinawan language and culture will be maintained and passed on in the future.

Island peoples around the world remain entangled in colonial processes. Western and metropolitan powers are increasingly deploying discourse of a 'China threat' to justify neocolonial entrenchment in the form of greater Western militarisation and economic dominance. In this paper, we investigate how Western and metropolitan powers use the China threat and warnings of economic, environmental, demographic, and military disaster to maintain and deepen colonial influence in former colonies, with special focus on four island states and territories: Guåhan/Guam in Oceania, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland in the Arctic, Okinawa in East Asia, and Jamaica in the Caribbean. We undertake this investigation as a means of practicing decolonial political geography, collaborating as a group of scholars from around the world and drawing upon diverse epistemologies and experiences to inform collaborative research and writing. Due to the complexities we have confronted in our efforts to think outside coloniality, this paper foregrounds our decolonial methodology and process, even as we respect our empirical findings.

Two decades after the main islands of Japan regained full sovereignty, Okinawa was added as a new prefecture to the Japanese state. Yet, the ecological, economic and social consequences of the persistent U.S. military presence on the islands to this day have a significant impact on the everyday life of Okinawans, and at many points in Okinawa’s post-war history they sparked sweeping citizens’ protests. This paper studies the citizens’ movement ahead of the reversion of 1972. While marginal in terms of resources, the movement spread and prevailed through innovative strategies of contentious action and based on its strong movement identity, which was framed along a joint historical consciousness of the activists. Taking an Okinawan perspective, this paper discusses why a reversion movement emerged in the first place. Furthermore, which images of this new nation “Japan with Okinawa” were created and represented, and why were they appealing to the people? The milestones of the reversion movement will be examined against the backdrop of an – as will be argued – ultimately failed process of nation building that continues to haunt Okinawa-Japan and Japan-US relations to this day. This study draws on a qualitative content analysis of scholarly works on the issue, historic and recent media coverage, as well as writings by contemporary witnesses in autobiographical and literary genres. In addition to Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities Sidney Tarrow’s take on social movement activism and Peter Katzenstein’s model of norm building in politics provide the analytical basis for this paper.

This paper studies local learning activities in school education in remote rural areas and clarify their problems and possibilities. A case study was conducted in Kunigami Village and Ogimi Village located on northern part of Okinawa Island, Japan. Both villages have totally different approaches to local learning, which is affected by differences in local education systems.

キーワード： 「身近な地域」の学習，地域多様性， 学校統廃合，学校間連携，教育システム, 遠隔農村地域

Key Words： Local learning activity, Regional diversity, School consolidation, Collaboration between schools, Educational system, Remote rural area

In 1997, the Japanese writer of Okinawan descent Medoruma Shun was awarded the Akutagawa prize for his story Droplets (Suiteki). In this tale, Tokushô, a veteran of the Battle of Okinawa, wakes up one day to find his leg turned into a gourd melon. His toe bursts, and water slowly comes out of it. Every night Tokushô is visited by the ghosts of his war comrades, who take turns and sit down to drink from his appendage. Tokushô is now forced to revisit those memories of the war he had been repressing for over forty years. This paper studies how Droplets functions as a work on personal trauma and on collective memory. Trauma and collective memory are addressed from two parallel perspectives: the narrative and the metanarrative. On the one hand, the story of Tokushô involves traumatic experiences and war memories in postwar Japan. On the other hand, this paper argues that Medoruma constructs his short story using particular devices to engage with the problematic issue of representing traumatic experiences and discussing war memories in postwar Japan. Specifically, these devices include fantastic elements to represent trauma and the use of culturally symbolic and referential to discuss war memory narratives in Japan.

In this chapter, I explore the analytical potential of archipelagic studies for inspiring decolonial struggles in the Trans-Pacific region. Specifically, I examine the archipelagic formation of Japanese imperialism, along with the indigenous and diasporic subjectivities that are subsumed under the myth of ethnic homogeneity promoted by the Japanese nation-state. As I aim to show, subjugation of ethnic groups in Japan, including the Ainu, Ryūkyūans, and Zainichi Koreans, hinges on not only the homogeneity myth but also the dominant geographic imaginary of Japanese territories.

*Disclaimer*
This chapter does not contain any information concerning the archaeological surveys specifically dealt with in this report.
It is a general presentation of a specific field of Okinawan archaeology aimed at non-specialized readers.

Chapter from:
Final Report: Archaeological Data Recovery for SOF Airfield Pavement and Roads, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, Feature 11 – Feature 15 – Feature 16 – Feature 21 – Site 3b Contract #W912HV-17-P-0003. Prepared for Kadena Town Board of Education and 718th Civil Engineer Squadron, Environmental Flight (718th CES/CEIE), Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Pacific Ocean Division, Japan District (CEPOJ-PP-AE USAEDJ), Camp Zama, Kanagawa, Japan. Ginowan : ARCGEO Inc., 2019

Lecture made during the 14th Symposium of the Association of Asian & African Studies of Latin America (ALADAA) held in La Plata (Argentina) in August 2013.
The paper identifies the cultural images used in order to develop inbound tourism in Okinawa.

This article examines competing narratives over belonging and authority at Japan's and China's margins by excavating the discursive practices employed by relevant state and substate actors in framing, contesting and (dis)assembling totalizing claims over Ryukyu/Okinawa and Taiwan since the late nineteenth century. Informed by the critical international relations literature on practices of statecraft and Foucauldian conceptions of power as productive and discursive, we suggest that the aforementioned 'margins' are sites central to the constitution, production and maintenance of Chinese and Japanese state identities, which have been repeatedly performed through violent material and discursive practices concealing these two states' lack of ontological foundation. We look at how the state-centric narratives employed by the Chinese and Japanese authorities have worked to limit, curtail and suppress their locally generated counter-narratives in such cases as the Taiwan Expedition (1874), the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands dispute and boundary-making between Okinawa and Taiwan. However, these cases also show that efforts to contain resistance to the state's inscription of boundaries separating an 'inside/self/domestic' from an 'outside/other/foreign' cannot fully succeed, not only because where there is power there is resistance but also because the state would wither away should its identity formation be successful in the terms in which it is articulated.

Discontent over US military bases in Japan's Okinawa prefecture has long been a prominent " thorn in the side " of US–Japan relations. But what exactly has been the effect of Okinawa's base politics on the management of the alliance? We examine Okinawa's significance on the US–Japan alliance—the " Okinawa effect " —in terms of the alliance's strategic coherence. Through an examination of the post–Cold War history of the base issue, we argue that, while there little to suggest that the Okinawa issue has undermined the alliance's strategic effectiveness , alliance efficiency in dealing with burden sharing problems has been diminished, at times substantially. While reduced efficiency may often be inevitable in alliances between democracies , this persistent inability to resolve burden sharing disputes in the Okinawan case means that there is still potential for deteriorating efficiency to eventually undermine the alliance's solidarity and effectiveness.

I call the complexity of the cultural complexes of the Ryukyus "the Ryukyu complex." Applying Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimble's concept of the cultural complex and Michael Vannoy Adams' multicultural imagination of the mythological unconscious to the topoanalysis of the Ryukyu complex, ecopsychology discloses place and placing of the Ryukyu complex in (1) the notion of nirai, the "paradise afar in the ocean,"  (2) the visiting deities of carnivals, (3)  absolute immanence of the resident deity, (4) illness narratives of noro, the "priestess" and yuta, the "shamaness,"  and (5) the archetypal defense of the cultural complex traumatized by the war.

Resumo A proposta central deste texto é discutir as características, as mudanças e as continuidades que a historiografia da imigração japonesa no Brasil passou nas últimas décadas. Embora exista hoje um considerável volume de publicações sobre a imigração e a presença japonesa no Brasil, são escassas as reflexões teóricas que tenham como propósito analisar as abordagens, as narrativas, as seleções e os silêncios presentes em tais textos. Historicamente, o que se percebe nas publicações acerca da imigração japonesa é um forte objetivo político, no sentido de enfatizar a importância dessa migração e os méritos que os imigrantes nipônicos lograram em alcançar em benefício de sua comunidade e do país. Tal situação foi fruto do longo período marcado pela desconfiança e mesmo pelo repúdio a que esses imigrantes ficaram sujeitos até meados do século XX. Por outro lado, busca-se destacar como essa historiografia originalmente " defensiva " da imigração japonesa se transformou, aos poucos, em uma narrativa " épica " que buscava construir o mito da " minoria modelo " , silenciando sobre temas que pudessem ameaçar a narrativa de uma imigração coesa, unida e vitoriosa. A guisa de conclusão será apresentado o caso dos okinawanos, um grupo minoritário extremamente importante na conformação da imigração japonesa e que foi " esquecido " por muitas décadas por fissurar o mito da homogeneidade japonesa, apontando para a existência de conflitos e de narrativa divergentes.

In the islands of Ryūkyū there are some toponyms containing the component pira/hira that originated from the Ainu word pira "cliff" / "rock": Kabiraiishizaki in the island of Ishigaki, the island of Hirari near Ishigaki, Kotohira in the island of Yoron, Takahira in the island of Takeshima, and Takahira in the island of Yakushima. The component pira/hira can't originate from any other language except Ainu. Toponyms with the same component pira/hira exist in Hokkaidō. Toponyms with the pira/hira component evidently should be traced back to the Jōmon language. The fact that toponyms of Jōmon origin can be decoded through modern Ainu means that the language of Jōmon and modern Ainu are pretty close. The fact that in the islands of Ryūkyū there are toponyms with the same component as in the island of Hokkaidō means that in ancient times Ainu inhabited the whole Japanese archipelago from Ryūkyū to Hokkaidō.

In David Bindman, Suzanne Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, vol. 6 of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., The Image of the Black in Western Art (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017)

Николай Невский: жизнь и наследие: сборник статей / сост. и отв. ред. Е. С. Бакшеев и В. В. Щепкин; Ин-т восточных рукописей РАН, Российский ин-т культурологии. — СПб. : Филологический факультет СПбГУ, 2013. — 292 с., ил.
ISBN 978-5-8465-1255-9
В сборник вошли статьи отечественных и зарубежных ученых, основанные на докладах, представленных в рамках «Невских чтений» — международного симпозиума в честь 120-летия со дня рождения выдающегося российского востоковеда Николая Александровича Невского (1892–1937). Проблематика статей определена разносторонним характером исследований, которым посвятил себя ученый: мифология, синто, айноведение, язык и культура Рюкю, тангутоведение и др.

The practices of Miko, Ainu and Ryūkyūan traditions of Japan have changed dramatically over time. While the Miko tradition is to some degree aligned with the mainstream dominant culture, the Ainu and Ryūkyūan cultures tend to be under-represented and viewed as ‘other’ within Japanese society. Institutionally, Japan recognizes the Ainu as Indigenous people through a resolution passed in 2007. Tokyo-based Kyodo News published an article claiming that there had been discussion in August of 2017 of passing a law with a similar acknowledgment, however, no such measure has officially been announced. The Ryūkyūan people in Okinawa are often viewed as a sub-group in Japan, and therefore they are rarely framed as an Indigenous minority. There have, however, been movements such as that of activist Shinako Oyakawa who has petitioned the UN forum for the recognition of the rights of Ryūkyūan people as indigenous (Magee, 2018).

The chapter addresses, after a brief historiographic overview of Ryukyuan historical linguistics, those topics on phonology (vowels, consonants, accent/tone), grammar (verbs, adjectives, case, kakari-musubi) and lexicon (pronouns, demonstratives) for which the contribution of Ryukyuan is, or has been claimed to be, important for the reconstruction of proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan (pJR), the common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan.

In 1879, Japan annexed the Ryūkyū Islands, dissolving the nominally independent Ryūkyū Kingdom and establishing Okinawa Prefecture. This helped inaugurate Imperial Japan’s
expansion beyond the historical naichi or “inner lands.” It also set in motion a structural transformation of Okinawan society, marked by the end of tribute trade with China, the abolition
of a centuries-old status system, and the gradual modernization of the economy. This process was painful, pitting the interests of the traditional Okinawan elite against those of Japanese administrators, with Okinawan peasants and laborers caught in the middle. The epicenter of this process was the prefectural capital of Naha – and for many Okinawans, particularly working class women, the soul of Naha was its commercial theater. This dissertation approaches prewar Okinawan commercial theater both as an institution and as a space of experience and expression. Its main focus is vernacular musical drama or kageki, which was created by classical performing artists disenfranchised by the dissolution of the court. Musical dramas such as A Peony of the Deep Mountains (Okuyama no botan) and Iejima Romance (Iejima Handō-gwa) draw selectively on both courtly and popular traditions, fusing the poetic sophistication of kumiodori dance-drama with the mass appeal of folk song and dance. After introducing early modern courtly and popular performing arts, I trace the emergence of commercial theater as an effect of contradictory social forces set in motion by annexation. Cross-reading actors’ memoirs and newspaper reviews with writings by period scholars such as Okinawan cultural historian Iha Fuyū and Japanese critical theorist Tosaka Jun, I situate commercial performance in its socioeconomic and ideological context. I then turn from a social scientific to a hermeneutic mode of critique, offering close readings of four influential musical dramas. Unlike coeval Okinawan elite literature, these dramas do not explicitly challenge the dominant order. I will argue, however, that by representing low-status female protagonists as self-constant and morally competent agents, they invite working class female spectators to reimagine the horizons of their social experience.