Organizer: Timothy S. George, University of Rhode Island, USA Discussant: Carol Gluck, Columbia University, USA David Obermiller examines attempts early in the U.S. Occupation to foster an imagined Ryukyuan identity to convince Okinawans they were not Japanese, using a national anthem and flag, Ryukyuan history textbooks, museums, and restoration of ancient sites. These efforts were initially embraced, but later rejected by the leaders of the reversion movement in the 1960s. Americans failed to galvanize Ryukyuan nationalism during the occupation, but in the past twenty years Okinawans have embraced an ethnic nationalism to resist both the U.S. and Japan. Timothy George examines four cases of furusato-zukuri, or home-town-building. Rural areas struggled to redefine themselves, keep their young people, and reorient their economies as farming, fishing, mining, and smokestack industries were marginalized in Japan’s increasingly high-tech, service-oriented economy. Case studies of Minamata on Kyushu, Tsumago on Honshu, Otaru on Hokkaido, and Uwa on Shikoku remind us how postwar identities and history have been experienced differently outside of Japan’s major cities. Hiraku Shimoda critiques how Japan’s mass media has propagated an alluring, yet problematic, narrative about the postwar. This narrative holds that Japan’s “golden age” is found between the 1950s and 80s, when ambitious baby boomers worked creatively and tirelessly for peaceful prosperity. One powerful transmitter of this nostalgia is Project X, a weekly NHK documentary series that aired from 2000 to 2005. What purports to be a populist, grassroots narrative is in fact a self-congratulatory mythology, skillfully pushing a retro-style economic nationalism and uniform identity of innovation and perseverance.
David Tobaru Obermiller examines the genesis of an Okinawan identity during an unlikely stage of Okinawa’s history: the early part of the U.S. Occupation when American civil affairs officials attempted to build an imagined Ryukyuan identity. Drawing upon the public memory of an age when the Ryukyus were an “independent” kingdom, American officials used notions of a Ryukyuan past to convince the people they were not Japanese. Officials created a national anthem and flag, promoted Ryukyuan history textbooks, constructed museums, and restored ancient sites. Their effort was initially embraced, but later set aside by those who came to lead the reversion movement in the 1960s. Many Okinawans today appear to possess a strong sense of ethnic identity predicated upon their long-standing opposition to the continued presence of American military bases. Indeed, long-standing popular opposition to the U.S. military bases and Tokyo’s complicity with this status quo has only reinforced the perception that Okinawans have always been Okinawans. Yet the powerful Okinawan identity present today has not always been so strong. During Japan’s seventy-year prewar rule, many Okinawans expressed their desire to become Japanese, and during the twenty-seven years of American military occupation, most Okinawans came to demand reversion to Japan because they saw themselves as Japanese. Although the American effort failed to galvanize Ryukyuan nationalism during the occupation period, in the past twenty-years Okinawans have embraced an ethnic nationalism to resist both the U.S. and Japan.
Timothy S. George examines four cases of furusato-zukuri, or home-town-building. Rural areas struggled to redefine themselves, keep their young people, and reorient their economies as farming, fishing, mining, and smokestack industries were marginalized in Japan’s increasingly high-tech, service-oriented economy. In Minamata these problems were compounded by mercury poisoning, Japan’s best-known pollution disaster. Local efforts resulted by the 1990s in an official apology by the mayor, monuments, memorial services, an environmental festival, and an attempt to be a “model environmental city.” The second case study looks at Tsumago on the old inland route from Edo to Kyoto, a pioneer of the township preservation type of furusato-zukuri. Third, in Otaru on Hokkaidō, once a major trading port and banking center that was called the “Wall Street of the north,” a citizens’ group was formed in 1973 to preserve the warehouses and canal, and this first movement to preserve a twentieth-century townscape made Otaru a major tourist destination. The fourth case study focuses on the town of Uwa. Utsunomiya Shōichi, whose family Gail Bernstein lived with and wrote about in the 1970s, later served as mayor and spearheaded an effort to revitalize a town where young people seemed to be rejecting farming and the town itself. Funding from the “construction state” built museums and other facilities, and Uwa sold itself as a tourist destination. All of these examples of furusato-zukuri are reminders that postwar history has been experienced differently outside of Japan’s major cities.
Hiraku Shimoda critiques how Japan’s mass media has propagated an alluring, yet problematic, narrative about the postwar experience. This narrative holds that Japan’s “golden age” is to be found between the 1950s and 80s, when ambitious baby boomers worked creatively and tirelessly for the sake of peaceful prosperity. One powerful transmitter of this nostalgia is Project X, a popular documentary series that aired weekly on NHK from 2000 to 2005. This highly-rated show recreates the trials and triumphs of technical innovators who developed the Walkman, the bullet train, the “washlet,” and other icons of industrial success. The show claims to shine the spotlight on “nameless individuals” and celebrate the ordinary rank-and-file who toiled anonymously “in the shadows of large groups and organizations.” Project X holds that the true heroes of the “High Speed Growth Era” were behind-the-scenes working stiffs, not elite bureaucrats or big business. However, what purports to be a populist, grassroots narrative is in fact a self-congratulatory mythology that skillfully pushes a retro-style economic nationalism and a uniform identity of innovation and perseverance. Any potentials for multiplicity and individuality of experience are ultimately subsumed within an hour-long dramatic formula. Ironically, then, Project X’s supposedly alternative approach ends up reinforcing familiar normatives. This talk will also consider some greater socio-economic circumstances that allowed – and even necessitated – a so-called “Project X mythology” to find an eager audience in the early twenty-first century.
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