“The Okinawa Problem as a Node”Writing “Postwar Okinawa” and Moriteru Arasaki’s Critique of Cultural Reductionism

抄録

For those who study the postwar Okinawan political and social history, Moriteru Arasaki’s texts have long been regarded as a key point of reference. However, despite his unrivalled volume of writings and significant influence, Arasaki’s thoughts, particularly the meaning of “postwar Okinawa”, remain largely unexplored. In this article, I reappraise Arasaki’s political thought by examining his historical texts, especially focusing on his first book, The Okinawan Problems: Twenty Years on (1965). My analysis reveals the following two points. First, by recentering the core historical force from the state to people, Arasaki formulated an alternative historical perspective on “postwar Okinawa”. Second, with the influence of Yoshio Nakano, Arasaki developed the idea of “the Okinawa problem as a node” to recontextualize the politics around Okinawa’s base politics with a global and regional history. By submitting these two points, I argue that Arasaki rearticulated the historical discourse as a means of intervention in the Cold War political order in Asia in terms of the experience of Okinawa’s popular struggle. I conclude this article by suggesting reconsidering Arasaki’s historical discourse as a mode of anti-imperial political thought in post-colonial Cold War in the region.

History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims. (Marx and Engels, 1956)