The Boundaries of 'the Japanese'

Volume 1: Okinawa 1818-1972 - Inclusion and Exclusion

Eiji Oguma, Leonie R. Stickland

• Publisher: Trans Pacific Press
• Year: 2014
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781920901431
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion have operated for centuries in the island chain that constitutes Japan's southernmost prefecture, Okinawa - otherwise known as the Ryukyu Islands. Are the people of Okinawa 'Japanese' or not 'Japanese'? Answers to this puzzling question are explored in this richly-detailed volume, written by one of Japan's foremost public intellectuals, historical sociologist Eiji Oguma. Here, Oguma addresses issues of Okinawan sovereignty and its people's changing historical, cultural, and linguistic identity, over more than 150 years until its 1972 reversion to Japanese control, following its administration by the US from the end of the Pacific War.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Chronological Table
• Acknowledgements
• Map of the main island of Okinawa
• Introduction
• 1 The Ryukyu Disposition(Ryūkyū shobun)
• 2 Okinawan Education and ‘Japanisation’
• 3 The Creation of Okinawan Nationalism
• 4 The Distortion of Orientalism
• 5 Islands on the Boundary
• 6 From Pro-independence toPro-reversion Discources
• 7 The Significance of ‘Japan, the Ancestral Land’
• 8 The Idea of Progressive Nationalism
• 9 The Dialect Placards of the 1960s
• 10 Anti-Reversion
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index