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Author: Hiroko Saito
On September 20, 1945, the election was held in several regions in Okinawa under US occupation for the first time since the end of World War II. It was the first election that Okinawan women exercised the right to vote, which was seven months earlier than the women’s first vote in mainland Japan. As this history indicates, the occupation by the US after World War II and the prolonged presence of the US military bases have had a huge impact on the lives of Okinawan women.
This article introduces five books that would help you understand the complicated reality of Okinawan women and some examples of scholarly approaches to that issue.
Women of Okinawa: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island by Ruth Ann Keyso and Okinawa’s GI Brides: Their Lives in America by Etsuko Takushi Crissey shed light on individual Okinawan women to tell the stories of their lives. Women of Okinawa includes the interviews with nine women living in Okinawa, and Okinawa’s GI Brides narrates the history of Okinawan women who married American military personnel. While both Keyso and Crissey focus on the gaps between the generations to show how contemporary political and economic situations affect individual lives, they also emphasize the strength of Okinawan women regardless of the generation or location.
Akemi Johnson’s Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa illustrates more recent circumstances of Okinawan women and the difficult realities they are facing today. Each chapter of the book is given the name of a woman for its title, and Johnson depicts her conversation with these Okinawan women and their backgrounds along with her observation and the data and history of Okinawa. Particularly, Johnson’s discussion of “Amejo,” a term for the girls who prefer to date only Americans, elucidates the fascinating stories of Okinawan women who navigate their lives by taking advantage of the complicated relations with the US military in today’s Okinawa.
If you want to learn the post-war history of Okinawan women from a broader perspective, Mire Koikari’s Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Militarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia would help you explore the gendered transpacific dynamics in the post-war era. Koikari examines the domestic sphere of the US-occupied Okinawa as a space where the US imperialism and the agency of Okinawan women intersected. Chapter 4 details the intimate relationship between Okinawa and Hawaii, which examines the role of the UH as well.
While Johnson and Koikari focus on a specific time period and theme, the series of Okinawa Jendā Gaku (沖縄ジェンダー学) edited by Ikue Kina includes various essays to provide a comprehensive picture of the field. There are three volumes: “Dentō eno apurōchi” (An Approach to “Tradition”), “Hō, Shakai, Shintai no Seido” (The Institutions of Law, Society, and Body), and “Kōsasuru Aidentitī” (Intersecting Identities). The specialties of contributors vary from history, literature, sociology to law.
As these books show, the sexual politics in Okinawa has been entangled with and shaped by US militarism. On the one hand, the ratio of international marriage, especially that between Japanese women and non-Japanese men, has been higher than that in mainland Japan. On the other hand, sexual assaults by the US military personnel have threatened Okinawan women since the beginning of the occupation until today despite the series of protests by the locals. Gender studies and feminism give you a valuable approach to acquire a nuanced understanding of these realities in Okinawa today and in the past.
Reference:
Crissey, Etsuko Takushi. Okinawa’s GI Brides: Their Lives in America. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017.
Johnson, Akemi. Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa. New York: The New Press, 2019.
Keyso, Ruth Ann. Women of Okinawa: Nive Voices from a Garrison Island. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Kina Ikue. Okinawa Gendā Gaku, vol. 1-3. Tokyo: Ōtsuki Shoten, 2014, 2015, 2016.
Koikari, Mire. Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Militarized Domesticity and Transnationalism in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
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