Writing Okinawa: Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance

In Writing Okinawa, Davinder Bhowmik presents the first English-language monograph on Okinawan fiction featuring astute analyses of literary works spanning the early 1900s through the 21^st century. As current geopolitical realities reinforce Okinawa's complex historical positionality, Bhowmik provides a timely treatment of how Okinawan authors have continually grappled with politicized questions of identity, language, history, and culture. Since the book's publication in 2008, the “Okinawa problem” (p. 4) has remained a lynchpin in regional contestations for power including the 2009 de-seating of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and tensions in U.S.-Japan relations over the Futenma base relocation. During Okinawa's November 2010 gubernatorial elections, international media coverage re-emphasized the “historical discrimination” of Okinawans as “second-class citizens.” The book thus proves particularly salient in developing a critical view of Okinawa's identity politics, past and present, by positioning Okinawan literature as beyond beautiful “local color” (p. 2) stories to a genre based...