Space of Occupation

This chapter considers the neocolonial condition of Okinawa. Situated at the geopolitical threshold of East Asia and the Northwest Pacific, Okinawa became an increasingly important subject of knowledge in anthropology and area studies during the 1940s. After the Allied powers’ victory, Okinawa was liberated from Japanese imperial rule and occupied by the United States until 1972. It has since remained a linchpin in America’s military strategy for the Pacific. The chapter analyzes Ōshiro Tatsuhiro’s novella The Cocktail Party (1967) alongside post-1990s critiques of the disciplinary formations of area studies and anthropology. These critiques reveal how Okinawa’s “liberated yet occupied” condition was produced by and then helped sustain the transpacific entanglements of Japanese and U.S. military-security imperialisms. Okinawa’s liminality, which keeps its indigenous sovereignty in suspension, has been integral to the Cold War regime of unredressability. And yet it has offered alternative visions for the politicization of historical knowledge and justice.