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Memories of Okinawa: Life and Times in the Greater Osaka Diaspora
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Out migration has long been a key component of the modern Okinawan experience. As the poorest prefecture in the country with an extremely limited land supply, there were plenty of economic incentives for Okinawans to seek employment outside the prefecture, and large numbers traveled to such places as the sugar and pineapple fields of Hawaii, the coffee plantations of Brazil, newly established colonies in Bolivia (see the Augustine chapter) and many other places in North and South America, Asia and the Pacific Islands region. As a consequence prewar Okinawa came to have the highest ratio of emigrants to total population in pre-World War II Japan and it is virtually de riguer for families in Okinawa to have relatives who live overseas. Although not as closely documented because of the absence of border control procedures (except for the period of U.S. occupation), even greater numbers of Okinawans migrated to the cities of mainland Japan. Large numbers of Okinawans still travel from job-scarce Okinawa to the mainland in search of economic opportunities.
- Type
- Part II: Contemporary Okinawan Society and Culture
- Information
- Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Special Issue S12: Course Reader No. 12. Putting Okinawa at the Center , January 2014 , pp. 123 - 150
- Creative Commons
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2014
References
Notes
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.
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 Okinawa-ken heiwa kinen shiryō-kan: sōgō annai (Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum guidebook), (Okinawa: Itoman, 2001), 27.
11 Ryūkyū Shinpō-sha, ed., Okinawa: Nijū seiki no kōbō (Okinawa in the twentieth century), (Naha: Ryūkyū Shinpō-sha, 2000), 130-31.
12 Okinawa-ken Heiwa Shiryō-kan, 31.
13 Kaneshiro, 1995.
14 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.
15 Mizuuchi Toshio, Ōsaka Okinawa Ajia: Ōsaka Shiritsu Daigaku Zengaku Kyōtsu Kyōiku Sōgō Kyōiku Kamoku: Ajia no Chiiki to Bunka Enshū, Osaka: Osakai Shiritsu Daigku Kyōomubu, 1999, 46-47.
16 Ōta Jun’ichi, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu (The Okinawans of Osaka) (Osaka: Burein Sentaa, 1996), 89-90.
17 “Hōchi sareru Okinawa suramu” (Okinawa slum long-neglected), Asahi Shinbun (July 15, 1968).
18 Mizuuchi, 1999, 47-48.
19 Interviews for this study conducted in September 1999.
20 Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 91.
21 Ōta, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 119.
22 Mizuuchi, 2000.
23 Mizuuchi, 1999, 52.
24 Arasaki Moriteru, 44.
25 Hokama Shuzen, Okinawa no rekishi to bunka (Okinawan history and culture) (Chūkō Shinsho, 1989). 94-99.
26 Tomiyama Ichirō, Kindai Nihon shakai to “Okinawa-jin” (Modern Japanese society and “Okinawans”), (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōron-sha, 1990), 1.
27 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.”
28 Written comment on questionnaire, April 2001.
29 Interview, April 2000.
30 Uda Shigeki, Uwa-nu ukami-sama: Tokeshi Kōtoku no han-sei (The divine pig: The life of Tokeshi Kotoku) (Nara: Uda Shuppan Kikaku, 1999), 173-96.
31 Written comment on questionnaire, December 2000.
32 Shinjō Eitoku, “Kansai ni okeru Uchinaanchu no ayumi” (The history of Okinawans in Kansai), Jichi Okinawa, no. 353, (July 1996): 18.
33 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.
34 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).
35 Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 89.
36 Interviews, June and August 2000.
37 Oyakawa Takayoshi, Ashiato: Oyakawa Takayoshi no kaisōroku (Footprints: recollections of Oyakawa Takayoshi) (Matsuei Insatsu, 1995), 21-22.
38 Oyakawa, Ashiato, 26.
39 Fukuchi, Okinawa jokō aishi, 78-79.
40 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.
41 Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 130.
42 Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 111.
43 Higa, 6.
44 Fukuchi, Okinawa jokō aishi, 120.
45 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.
46 Ryūkyū, Okinawa: Nijū seiki no kōbō, 52, 56.
47 Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 82.
48 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.
49 Oyakawa, Ashiato, 2-22.
50 Chalmers Johnson, ed., Okinawa: Cold War, (Japan Policy Research Institute, 2000), 77.
51 Molasky and Rabson, Southern Exposure, 82.
52 Quoted in Ota, Osaka no Uchinaan-chu, 97-98.
53 Quoted in Nakama, “1920, 1930 nendai,” 99.
54 Quoted in Nakama, “1920, 1930 nendai,” 99.
55 Tomiyama, Kindai Nihon, 164.
56 Interviewed in September, 1999.
57 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.
58 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.
59 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.
60 Arasaki, 71-72.
61 Interview, November 2000.
62 See Yūhi, 1987 and 1997.
63 See Ota Jun’ichi.
64 Interviews of Yamashiro Kenkō, Osaka Office of Okinawa Prefecture, September 2000.
65 Johnson, Okinawa: Cold War, 88.
66 Published interview of Kinjō Kaoru, co-director of the Kansai Okinawa Bunko (Culture Center), in Yomiuri Shinbun, May 13, 2001.
67 Comment from interview of descendant in his mid-30s, February 2001.
68 Questionnaire, March 2001.
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