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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power
Rabson's chapter explores the experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, specifically the diaspora communities that developed in Osaka from the early 20th century to the present. These communities faced discrimination much like Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants in America. Rabson's likening of Okinawan experiences on the mainland to that of foreigners trying to assimilate in a new country is an apt analogy. For example, as in America, some Okinawans changed their names to de-emphasize their Okinawan ethnicity, and laborers found they earned a lower wage than did other Japanese, and at times were told not to apply for certain jobs. Worsening economic conditions in Okinawa in the first decades of the 20th century had caused the sudden migration of Okinawans to the mainland, while other Okinawans migrated to Taiwan and the islands of Micronesia during the colonial period.
1. “Ryukyu” never caught on as a place name during the U.S. occupation, either in Okinawa or on the mainland. This was partly because the word “Ryukyu” evoked memories of derogatory references by mainland Japanese who identified people from Okinawa Prefecture with what had recently been a “foreign” kingdom. This implied that Okinawans were not fully Japanese and, thus, “inferior” to mainlanders.
In addition, Okinawans at home and on the mainland easily saw through the U.S. military's insistence on calling Okinawa “The Ryukyu Islands” and the people there “Ryukyuans” as part of a heavy-handed effort to separate them from from Japan. The failed American attempt to re- ”Ryukyuanize” Okinawans was undertaken in hopes of suppressing the reversion movement, which had gained support steadily since the early 1950s.
2. In a sense, I was one of those “occupiers,” though my job as a U.S. Army draftee in the maintenance platoon at an ammunition depot in Henoko from July, 1967 to June, 1968 had nothing to do with administering the occupation.
3. Kaneshiro Munekazu,”Esunikku gurupu to shite no ‘Okinawa-jin” (Okinawans as an ethnic group), Ningen Kagaku, no. 37, (1992): 29-57.
4. Fukuchi Hiroaki, ed., Okinawa jokō aishi (The tragic history of Okinawan factory women) (Haibaru, Okinawa: Naha Shuppan-sha, 1985), 18, 37.
5. Higa Michiko, “Jokō” (Women factory workers), Yōju (Banyan), (April 1996): 3.
6. Meiō University historian Higa Michiko, interview, November 2000.
7. Yūhi (Launching forth), Volume of essays and photographs commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Osaka League of Okinawa Prefectural Associations (Osaka Okinawa Kenjin Rengo-kai, 1987), 40,47; Yūhi (Launching forth), Volume of essays and photographs commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Osaka League of Okinawa Prefectural Associations (Osaka Okinawa Kenjin Rengo-kai, 1997), 50, 62.
8. Kaneshiro, 1992.
9. Yūhi, 50, 61.
10. Interviews in Okinawa, June, 2000. Officials at the Okinawa Prefectural Association of Hyŏgo complained to me in June of 2001 that commemorative publications of recent “Uchinan-chu Taikai,” highly publicized gatherings of people from the Okinawa diaspora held periodically in Okinawa, devote many pages of text and color photographs to participants from Hawaii and North and South America, but include barely two paragraphs on a back page for Okinawans in greater Osaka.
11. Okinawa-ken heiwa kinen shiryō-kan: sōgō annai (Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum guidebook), (Okinawa: Itoman, 2001), 27.
12. Ryūkyū Shinpō-sha, ed., Okinawa: Nijū seiki no kōbō (Okinawa in the twentieth century), (Naha: Ryūkyū Shinpō-sha, 2000), 130-31.
13. Okinawa-ken Heiwa Shiry ō-kan, 31.
14. Shima o deta tami no sensō taiken-shū (Collected war experiences of people who left the islands) (Okinawa Kenjin-kai Hyōgo-ken Honbu, 1995), 276-279.
15. Ōta Jun'ichi, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu (The Okinawans of Osaka) (Osaka: Burein Sentaa, 1996), 8889; more of this interview is translated in Chalmers Johnson, ed., Okinawa: Cold War Island, (Japan Policy Research Institute, 2000), 89.
16. Questionnaire, April 2001.
17. This currently estimated figure is cited in such official publications of the Okinawa Prefectural Government as “Heiwa no ishiji” (Cornerstone of peace), 1995, and “Okinawa heiwa shiryō -kan sōgō annai” (Okinawa peace museum guidebook), 2001.
18. Kaneshiro, 1995.
19. They are concentrated mostly in its Hirao, Kobayashi, Kitamura, Kita Okajima and Minami Okajima precincts, and comprise about one-fourth of the ward's total population officially listed at 75,043 for the year 2000 (Taishō Ward Office, General Affairs Section, 2001). For the other communities in greater Osaka, unofficial and unpublished estimates are that 7500 migrants and their descendents live in Osaka's Nishinari Ward, next to Taishō Ward, and approximately 10,000 live in or around the Tonouchi section of Amagasaki City, just across the Kanzaki River from Osaka City in Hyōgo Prefecture where another 1500 are estimated to live in the Takamatsu section of Takarazuka City and 900 in Itami City.
20. Mizuuchi Toshio, Ōsaka Okinawa Ajia: Ōsaka Shiritsu Daigaku Zengaku Kyōtsu Kyōiku Sōgō Kyōiku Kamoku: Ajia no Chiiki to Bunka Enshū, Osaka: Osakai Shiritsu Daigku Kyomubu, 1999, 46-47.
21. Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 89-90.
22. “Hochi sareru Okinawa suramu” (Okinawa slum long-neglected), Asahi Shinbun (July 15, 1968).
23. Mizuuchi, 1999, 47-48.
24. Interviews for this study conducted in September 1999.
25. Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 91.
26. Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 119.
27. Mizuuchi, 2000.
28. Mizuuchi, 1999, 52.
29. Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 98.
30. Arasaki Moriteru, 44.
31. Hokama Shuzen, Okinawa no rekishi to bunka (Okinawan history and culture) (Chūkō Shinsho, 1989). 94-99.
32. Tomiyama Ichirō, Kindai Nihon shakai to “Okinawa-jin” (Modern Japanese society and “Okinawans”), (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōron-sha, 1990), 1.
33. Some Okinawans over fifty articulate the consonant “s” as “sh” in words like sensei (teacher), pronounced “shenshei,” or senso (war), pronounced “shenshō.” Some of them also articulate the vowel sounds “o” and “e” as “u” and “i,” respectively, in words like teiki (commuter pass), pronounced “tiiki,” and hako (box), pronounced “haku.”
34. Written comment on questionnaire, April 2001.
35. Interview, April 2000.
36. Uda Shigeki, Uwanu ukami-sama: Tokeshi Kōtoku no han-sei (The divine pig: The life of Tokeshi Kōtoku) (Nara: Uda Shuppan Kikaku, 1999), 173-96.
37. Written comment on questionnaire, December 2000.
38. Shinjō Eitoku, “Kansai ni okeru Uchinaanchu no ayumi” (The history of Okinawans in Kansai), Jichi Okinawa, no. 353, (July 1996): 18.
39. Chinen Seishin's acutely satirical stage play “Jinruikan” (Human pavilion, 1976) features a uniformed “trainer” brandishing a whip who barks commands at “male” and “female” specimens.
40. Yamanokuchi Baku, “Mr. Saitō of Heaven Building” (Tengoku-biru no Saitō-san) (originally published in 1938) translated by Rie Takaki in Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson, eds., Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa, (University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
41. Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 89.
42. Interviews, June and August 2000.
43. Oyakawa Takayoshi, Ashiato: Oyakawa Takayoshi no kaisōroku (Footprints: recollections of Oyakawa Takayoshi) (Matsuei Insatsu, 1995), 21-22.
44. Oyakawa, Ashiato, 26.
45. Fukuchi, Okinawa jokō aishi, 78-79.
46. Nakama Keiko, “1920, 1930 nendai ni okeru zai-Han Okinawa-jin no seikatsu ishiki” (Life styles among Okinawan residents of Osaka in the 1920s and 1930s), Osaka Jinken Hakubutsu-kan Kiyo (Bulletin of the Osaka Human Rights Museum), no. 3, (1999): 61-74.
47. Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 130.
48. Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 111.
49. Higa, 6.
50. Fukuchi, Okinawa jok ō aishi, 120.
51. Kinjō Kaoru (March 20, 1987), “Osaka to Okinawa” (Osaka and Okinawa) month-long series of interviews in Mainichi Shinbun March 9 to April 9, 1987. Mainichi Shinbun interview, March 20, 1987.
52. Ryūkyū, Okinawa: Nijū seiki no kobo, 52, 56.
53. Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 82.
54. Though references to the former Ryūkyū Kingdom and its cultural legacy were usually free of negative connotations, calling someone “Ryūkyū” or “Ryūkyū-jin” was more problematic. As in examples quoted above, mainlanders used the term “Ryūkyū” or “Ryūkyū-jin” derisively when scolding factory workers returning late for curfew; or, when announcing on signs in front of factories and rooming houses “Chōsen-jin, Ryūkyū-jin o-kotawari” (Koreans and Ryukyuans prohibited). Women from Okinawa who were displayed like circus animals in the notorious “Human Pavilion” at a 1903 international exposition in Osaka were called “Ryūkyū-jin.” And Hirotsu Ryūrō's 1926 novel, which he titled “Samayoeru Ryūkyū-jin” (The vagabond Ryukyuan), was widely criticized by Okinawans on the mainland for a protagonist caricatured from negative Okinawan stereotypes. Its author subsequently made a public apology and canceled scheduled reprintings.
Recently, however, the status of the word “Ryūkyū” seems to have improved among Okinawans and mainlanders alike, though some connotations remain problematic. Okinawans at home and in the diaspora express varying degrees of pride and nostalgia from historical memories of the formerly independent Ryūkyū Kingdom, in part because hopes have been unrealized for a significant reduction of the military presence and healthy economic development in Okinawa after reversion. Furthermore, there is currently a widespread fascination among mainlanders with cultural manifestations of an often exoticized “Ryūkyū,” which has been exploited commercially. N.H.K. television's 1993 serial historical drama, criticized by some Okinawans for stereotyped characterizations, was entitled, like the book it was based on, “Ryūkyū no kaze” (The Winds of Ryukyu). The word “Ryūkyū” now occurs frequently in the titles for recordings of widely popular Okinawan folk and folk-rock music, such as the 1995 c.d. “Ryukyu Magic” (Air-4001, Tokyo). Okinawans in the prefecture and on the mainland offer lessons in Ryūkyū buy ō (classical dance), Ryūkyū ryōri (cuisine), and Ryūkyū min'yō (folk music) to a growing clientele.
55. Oyakawa, Ashiato, 2-22.
56. Johnson, Okinawa: Cold War, 77.
57. Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 82.
58. Quoted in Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 97-98.
59. Quoted in Nakama, “1920, 1930 nendai,” 99.
60. Quoted in Nakama, “1920, 1930 nendai,” 99.
61. Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 164.
62. Interviewed in September, 1999.
63. Miyawaki Yukio, “Kansai ni okeru Okinawa shusshin-sha dōkyō sōshiki no seiritsu to tenkai” (The establishment and development of organizations of Okinawans in Kansai), Ningen Kagaku Ronshū, 28, (1997): 91; Oyakawa, Ashiato, 293.
64. Koko ni yōju ari (The banyan tree here) Volume of essays and photographs commemorating the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Hyōgo Okinawa Prefectural Association (Okinawa Kenjin-kai Hyōgo honbu, 1982), 145-216.
65. Koko ni Yōju ari, 94-95; Steve Rabson, Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas, (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989) (reprinted 1996), xi-xii and 22-23.
66. Arasaki, 71-72.
67. Interview, November 2000.
68. See Yūhi, 1987 and 1997.
69. See Ota Jun'ichi.
70. Interviews of Yamashiro Kenkō, Osaka Office of Okinawa Prefecture, September 2000.
71. Johnson, Okinawa: Cold War, 88.
72. Published interview of Kinjō Kaoru, co-director of the Kansai Okinawa Bunko (Culture Center), in Yomiuri Shinbun, May 13, 2001.
73. Comment from interview of descendant in his mid-30s, February 2001.
74. Questionnaire, March 2001.
75. For analysis of this crime and its impact in Okinawa, see chapter by Linda Angst in this volume.
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