Okinawa is a rich source of provocation for contemporary Japanese studies in English. From the view of modern area studies, Okinawa lies within Japan's borders yet is simultaneously other. Initiated in part by the larger shift within cultural studies and postcolonial studies toward the geographical, linguistic, and cultural margins, the steady increase in scholarly attention directed to Okinawa since the 1990s has created a space in which Okinawan voices can be heard. These voices challenge the myth of Japanese ethnic homogeneity and thereby permit an arguably more interesting view of Japan (and Japanese studies) as multicultural and diverse.1 However, that we increasingly come to Okinawa only by beginning with Japan betrays a context that relegates this region, its history, and its cultures to a subcategory unable to constitute the whole. The inescapability of this relationship to Japan is evident in the titles of anthologies of fiction by Okinawan writers...
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Book Review|
February 01 2020
Contemporary Okinawan Studies and Its Borders: Four Perspectives - Okinawa's GI Brides: Their Lives in America and Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation and Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization and The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’: Volume 1: Okinawa 1818–1972—Inclusion and Exclusion
Okinawa's GI Brides: Their Lives in America
. By Etsuko Takushi Crissey. Translated by Steve Rabson. Honolulu
: University of Hawai‘i Press
, 2017
. vi, 140 pp. ISBN: 9780824856489 (cloth).Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation
. Edited by Pedro Iacobelli and Hiroko Matsuda. Lanham, Md.
: Lexington Books
, 2017
. xv, 195 pp. ISBN: 9781498533133 (paper).Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization
. By Masamichi S. Inoue. 2nd ed. New York
: Columbia University Press
, 2017
. xli, 296 pp. ISBN: 9780231138918 (paper).The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’: Volume 1: Okinawa 1818–1972—Inclusion and Exclusion
. By Eiji Oguma. Translated by Leonie R. Stickland. Melbourne
: Trans Pacific Press
, 2014
. 430 pp. ISBN: 9781920901486 (cloth).
Victoria Young
Victoria Young
University of Cambridge
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Journal of Asian Studies (2020) 79 (1): 185–194.
Citation
Victoria Young; Contemporary Okinawan Studies and Its Borders: Four Perspectives - Okinawa's GI Brides: Their Lives in America and Rethinking Postwar Okinawa: Beyond American Occupation and Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization and The Boundaries of ‘the Japanese’: Volume 1: Okinawa 1818–1972—Inclusion and Exclusion. Journal of Asian Studies 1 February 2020; 79 (1): 185–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911819002079
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