Articulations of Okinawan indigeneities, activism, and militourism: A study of interdependencies of U.S. and Japanese empires

In this dissertation I explore complex intersections of tourism, militarism, and interdependencies of the U.S. and Japanese empires that have defined Okinawan-ness. I analyze these intersections with an emphasis on contemporary Okinawa since 1972, the year that marked the end of the official U.S. military occupation of Okinawa and a continuation of informal militarized relationship of the two empires. I foreground implications of contemporary Okinawan-ness as it is raced, classed and gendered through the socio-political mechanisms of the U.S. militarism, Japanese imperialism, and tourism. I show that the mechanisms of material and institutional culture, historical approaches, and practices of resistance produced different versions of Okinawan-ness.Suggesting a kind of investigation that looks at Okinawan-ness as a useful category of analysis that helps to understand a continuum of "Okinawan-ness," I make visible mechanisms of the empires as operating through social and cultural institutions of militarism and tourism while simultaneously modifying and constructing Okinawan-ness. I argue that Okinawans participate in the process of constructing, re-/de-constructing, and consuming Okinawa/n-ness, more or less contemporaneously in response to their social environment as it is constructed by the relationalities among the U.S., Japanese and Okinawans. Each chapter investigates different ways of articulations of Okinawan-ness as historically situated in relation to Japanese colonialism and U.S. militarism as articulated in the so-called 3Ks---kokyo koji (public work), kichi (military bases), and kanko (tourism)---which includes the phenomenon of "militourism" as consumed and re-articulated in two entertainment spaces---American Village and Koza Music Town---as well as through intimate relationships between local women and U.S. servicemen and as used as a political tool in anti-militarist movements in Okinawa and transnational network, which I call the politics of indigeneities. I argue that Okinawan-ness, as expressed through an Okinawan word uchinanchu and strategic uses of it in the anti-militarist activism, is a form of "direct theory"---a theory that analyzes the interdependencies of the U.S. and Japanese empires through the articulation of Okinawan-ness and at the same time is a form of resistance. Finally, I discuss some implications of anti-militarist activism on other indigenous anti-militarist activists, such as those in Guam.