The Formation Processes of the “Complex Nation” in the Early Post-war Okinawa

Abstract

Based on R.Brubaker’s sociological framework for “eventful” nationalisms,this paper presented the formation processes of the dominant “we” vision (so called “national identity”) of the post-war Okinawa in the early 1950s. It focused on the transaction between the vision formation and the institutions/policies of the two relating governments, the U.S. and Japan.
The term “Complex Nation” refers to the “we” vision represented by simultaneous employment of the two different categories of “nation”, in this case “Japanese” and “Okinawan”. This concept was introduced to avoid the dominant, but theoretically invalid presumption that see “national identities” are mutually exclusive.
In pre-WWII Okinawa, the modern “we” vision was formulated as a distinctive ethnic group that constitutes a segment of the Japanese nation. The term “Okinawan” was not expressively linked to the thought of Self-Determination.
This “we” vision, however, was destabilized when the Japanese rule was replaced by that of the American’s after the war. I argued that the reconfiguration processes of the “we” vision in the early post-war period may be revealed by paying attention to the formation and relating processes of the three Self-Determination derived ideals arose at that time. These are Jichi (self-governance), KeizaiJiritsu (economic self-support) of the Okinawan Nation and Fukki (reversion to the Japanese Nation).
After verifying the fact that Jichi and keizaiJiritsu became idiomatic phases by 1950,
I argued that the “national identity” formation processes of the two different vectors occurred simultaneously in 1951.
One was the process of the strengthening Jichi and keizaiJiritsu ideals, caused by the American institutions/policies conflictive to these ideals.
The frequent American interventions in the civil affairs that were supposed to be reserved for the self-governance of Okinawan left the Okinawa Gunto Government with little self-deciding power to practice.
The keizaiJiritsu ideal, put forward by the Okinawa Gunto Government in its economic plan, was also denied by the U.S., because the “native” industrial growth was considered as of secondly importance.
The resulted grievances strengthened the Okinawan’s normative attachment to Jichi and keizaiJiritsu ideals, and the vision of “we” as a self-determining subject.
The process of the other vector, the formation and mainstreaming of Fukki proceeded simultaneously.
The trade with Japan, reopened in 1950, constituted the structural factor. The Japanese government institutions/policies that established the tariff and non-tariff barriers against Okinawan commodities stimulated the Okinawan perception that the Okinawan export industries could only survive if it had a free access to the Japanese market, and placed under the Japanese Government protection.
The actual reversionist movement arose when the negotiation on the political status of Okinawa after the peace treaty started between Japan and the U.S. in the early 1951.
The “we” vision put forward by the reversionists, however, was qualitatively different from the “we” vision of the pre-war type since the category “Okinawan” now connoted “the self-determining subject”. What came into being was a frame of vision in which the two categories of self-determining subject are rhetorically connected to represent “we”.