Making history from Japan's margins: Ōta Masahide and Okinawa

Abstract

On 28 September 1995, Okinawan Governor Ota Masahide announced that he had decided to refuse to act as proxy in the signing of leases for land utilized by the US military within Okinawa prefecture. In his subsequent testimony to the Japanese Supreme Court, he argued that the disproportionate burden of US bases in Okinawa amounted to a form of institutionalised discrimination. More than any previous governor, Ota drew connections between the base issue-or what he has repeatedlytermed the "Okinawan problem"-and questions of democracy, autonomy, and cultural diversity. Before running for governor in 1990, Ota was an academic and a central figure in Okinawan public debate. Spanning almost fifty years, he has written over 60 books on contemporary issues concerning Okinawa. This thesis explores the multiple connections between "politics" and "history" within the life and work of Ota Masahide as an intellectual and as governor of Okinawa. I trace the way in which Ota has negotiated and contested Japanese national paradigms of homogeneity and US military power within historical discourse and as activist and politician. In postwar Okinawa, claims to Okinawan culture and history have been inherently politicised, just as contests over Okinawa's position in relation to Japan and against the US military presence are also cultural and historical contests. Within the intersection between politics and history, the question of how to conceive of history from "the margins" has also been a question of how to perceive and combat the cultural, economic, and political structures by which Okinawa is marginalised within Japan and under US-Japan relations. Show more