Above: A reenactment of Ryukyu Kingdom royal court New Year’s ceremonies at the former royal palace at Shuri. Photo my own. Jan 1, 2017.
History & Culture of Okinawa
Though today governed by Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures as part of Japan, the Ryukyu Islands boast their own distinctive history and culture. An archipelago stretching between Kyushu (“mainland Japan”) in the north and Taiwan in the south, defining the boundary of the East China Sea to the west and with the Pacific to the east, the Ryukyus were long a part of a complex and diverse maritime region where Japonic, continental, and other peoples and influences interacted and intermixed.
Though ruled as an independent kingdom from a royal court based at Shuri (today part of Naha City, on the island of Okinawa) for centuries - a royal court which adopted numerous aspects of Ming, Qing, and Japanese elite cultural influences - each of the islands maintained distinctive customs, traditions, languages, and sense of identity, and still do today. While the northern portion of the archipelago (the Amami Islands and others nearer to Kyushu) were brought under the thumb of the Shimazu family, samurai lords of Kagoshima, in 1609, the southern half (from Okinawa, south to Yonaguni) remained under the rule of the Shuri-centered Kingdom, a kingdom which many on the southernmost islands resented as an invader. Tokyo declared the kingdom abolished and its lands annexed in the 1870s, only about 150 years ago. Tokyo imposed harsh assimilation policies backed by orientalist and imperialist rhetoric, and many people emigrated, seeking a better life in Hawaiʻi, the mainland United States, South America, or elsewhere, forming diaspora communities many of which remain strong today. In 1945, Imperial Japan allowed the island to become the site of the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific War, sacrificing Okinawa and its people in a last-ditch effort to protect the “Home Islands” (i.e. “mainland” Japan) and the Japanese people living there, from Allied invasion. After the war, while the Allied Occupation ended in most of Japan in 1952, in the Ryukyus, it continued. The people of the Amamis protested, and were granted an end to occupation in 1953. The people of Okinawa, meanwhile, remained under US Occupation for another twenty years, until 1972, with all the dangers, and the political and cultural influences, that brought with it.
Today, Okinawa is an equal part of Japan - a prefecture and not any sort of “overseas territory,” with its people enjoying full equal political rights and privileges as Japanese citizenry - but the legacies of the islands’ distinct cultural origins, their centuries of independence under a Ming-influenced and distinctively Ryukyuan royal government, decades of imperialist and orientalist treatment, wartime devastation, and American influence remain. Okinawa is today the poorest or second-poorest prefecture in Japan, with a high unemployment rate, high rates of alcoholism, and other such problems. A heavy US military presence also remains, occupying a significant portion of the main island of Okinawa, and carrying considerable pros and cons. Pride in Okinawan identity and efforts to revive and maintain Okinawan language and culture are strong, but are also shaped by economic and political pressures, including the desires and expectations of tourists and a need to cater to them.
The study of Okinawan history and culture is an opportunity to learn about an exciting, interesting, vibrant people, place, and culture which is no less a part of our broader world than any other, and of our community and society at home. Okinawa’s distinctive history and culture provides an opportunity to challenge and complicate our understandings of “Japan,” allowing for discussions about what is and is not “Japanese culture,” “Japanese history,” or “Japanese identity” and for expanding our vision of East Asia beyond a nationally-oriented and presentist focus on only China, Japan, and Korea.
Consideration of the particular case of Okinawan history and culture in comparison with those of Korea and Taiwan, the Ainu people of Hokkaido, Hawaiʻi and Guam, and elsewhere in the world, further illuminates complexities in how we think about race and ethnicity, tradition and modernity, colonialism and imperialism, the nation, indigeneity, and other historical processes and concepts, allowing for new insights not only for a deeper understanding of Okinawa, Japan, and East Asia, but of those concepts as well.
Below: a singer at an Okinawan live music bar associated with Okinawan pop music star, peace activist, and one-time legislative representative Kina Shо̄kichi, in front of a wall bearing one of his catchphrases: “subete no buki o gakki ni“ ("all weapons into musical instruments”). Photo my own, March 2008.
