Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization by Masamichi S. Inoue

Author:Masamichi S. Inoue [Inoue, Masamichi S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9780231138901
Google: PmhAY91gwYsC
Goodreads: 771334
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2007-01-15T11:45:52+00:00

CONSANGUINITY AND THE OPPOSITIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

First, the important role consanguinity (kinship) played in the construction of the oppositional consciousness in the Society for the Protection of Life is indicated by the fact that many (if not all) of its members were related to “native” Henoko descent groups long relegated to the fringe of the communal power structure. Early on in my fieldwork, I heard residents who had joined the society constantly talking about who was related to whom, while articulating the increasingly fine line between “genuine” Henoko residents and “out-of-towners” in Henoko. When I listened to these stories, it almost sounded as if out-of-towners, who had exerted enormous influences on Henoko’s prospering entertainment business in the 1960s and 1970s and who had joined the Henoko administration thereafter, wanted the offshore base because they did not share Okinawa’s collective memories of war, the bases, and the servicemen, while genuine natives did share those memories and, consequently, did not and should not want the new base. Put differently, in the realm of consanguinity, the “native/Henokonian” (i.e., genuine, righteous) point of view was being constructed in opposition to the “corrupt” out-of-towners, while it was also being conflated with a more general, and authentic, Okinawan perspective (“we are Okinawans”) that was combating the “immoral,” even “evil,” power of Tokyo and Washington.

One of the central figures of the society—a seventy-eight-year-old man affectionately called Grandpa Iheya—asserted such genuine nativeness and, by implication, “Okinawan” conscience as well. He somewhat proudly told me, while holding a thick family tree book of fifteen generations in his hand, that he was descended from one of the (lower ranked) official families that served the Ryukyu Kingdom. Other residents also told me that Grandpa Iheya’s descent group, although it had been mostly eliminated from the Henoko administration since the 1970s, had produced distinguished figures in larger Okinawan politics, business, and education. Familial ties to the Kingdom, reduced as they may have been, were nostalgically evoked through Grandpa Iheya, who assumed an aura of being distinct from the descendants of the subjugated peasant class that now populated Henoko and “contaminated” authentic Henokoness as intertwined with the essence of timeless, pristine Okinawa.

Another leader of the Society for the Protection of Life, fifty-three-year-old Haebaru Kenji, also brings the questions of consanguinity to the fore. The Haebaru munchū, a native Henoko descent group which is related to Grandpa Iheya’s munchū, is composed of three sublineages that launched into various domains of Henoko social life.8 Haebaru told me that he started the anti-offshore-base movement, like Grandpa Iheya, out of pride as a genuine Henokonian and antagonism against the out-of-towners such as Sueyoshi Kaoru who had dominated Henoko in general, and the Henoko administration in particular (see chapter 2).

It should be noted, however, that Haebaru originally made a resolute proposal to the local administration about actively inviting the offshore base to Henoko on the grounds that it would revitalize Henoko’s economy. As he openly acknowledged, politically Haebaru was on the side of the conservative establishment, deeply involved in the activities of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Okinawa.

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