The three books under review focus on the modern history of Okinawa, retracing political, economic, and cultural dynamics that have informed the lives of the islanders since the late nineteenth century and illuminating the multiple and often conflicting processes through which the meaning of “Okinawa” has been negotiated. At first glance, these studies seem to share little in common, as the topics they cover range from Shuri Castle to peasant revolt to language and literature, and the methodologies they draw on reflect the disciplinary conventions of history, sociology, linguistics, and religion, among others. However, a closer examination reveals a number of themes that tie them together, suggesting a potential space of dialogue that exists despite their differences. First, all three studies examine Okinawa's entanglements with Japan or the United States, or both, situating the islands within the larger contexts of cross-cultural and cross-regional dynamics. Second, they raise the question of the political agency of Okinawans, whose subjectivities are never reducible to “resisters” or “victims” but must be (re)conceptualized as multifaceted and fluid. Third, they illuminate the roles intellectuals played in the making of modern Okinawa, pointing out a critical linkage between empire building and knowledge making. Finally, the figure of women plays a salient role in each volume, highlighting the significance of gender in the theorizing of Okinawa. Collectively, then, the three books provide a moment to consider key analytical issues in Asian studies, with Okinawa providing the space, indeed inspiration, for such meditation.

Tze May Loo's Heritage Politics examines the process of “Okinawa's incorporation into a subordinate position in the Japanese nation-state and the role that Okinawa's cultural heritage, especially Shuri Castle, plays in creating, maintaining, negotiating, and resisting that position” (p. 3). Skillfully reconstructing the history of heritage politics involving Shuri Castle and other cultural sites and objects since the late nineteenth century, she highlights the intertwined dynamic of promotion of empire and preservation of culture. As Japanese and American authorities “sought to use Okinawa's cultural heritage to control, discipline, and subordinate Okinawa,” Okinawans actively participated in the same dynamic to “negotiate a more equitable position for themselves” (p. 4). As Loo points out, Japanese and American involvement in the preservation of Shuri Castle has left a complex legacy for present-day politics. Ongoing protest mobilizations in Okinawa, in which Shuri Castle is frequently invoked as the embodiment of indigenous cultural pride and strength, critically hinge on “being silent about Japanese and American authorities' contributions to Okinawa's cultural heritage” (p. 15).

The book begins with the Ryūkyū Disposition in 1879, when Japan annexed the Ryūkyū Kingdom, removed King Shō Tai from Shuri Castle, and began the process of transforming the vestige of the deposed kingdom. Initially converted into a military base to be occupied by soldiers of the Kumamoto garrison, the castle fell into general disrepair with the garrison's departure in 1896. To stave off the tide of slow ruination, Shuri Ward began a process of buying back the site and reclaiming the castle as a symbol of the islands' cultural heritage. However, their efforts were stymied due to a lack of funding, leaving the castle in a state of neglect through the 1910s.

The 1924 “discovery” of Shuri Castle by Itō Chūta brought a dramatic change. A leading imperial architect in Japan, Itō was involved in the construction of the Heian Shrine, the Meiji Shrine, the Karafuto Shrine, the Grand Shrine of Taiwan, and the Grand Shrine of Chōsen, among others. Shuri Castle was inserted into this orbit of architectonic imperialism, as Itō initiated a process of converting the castle's main hall, which was scheduled for demolition, into the worshippers' hall of the Okinawa Shrine. While existing scholarship “largely ignores Ito's embeddedness in the landscape of imperial Japan” (p. 58), Loo argues that his involvement in the preservation of Shuri Castle must be understood as “doubled in nature” (p. 57). While his advocacy ensured the castle's survival as a national treasure and the acquisition of much-needed state funds, it also incorporated the symbol of the Ryūkyū Kingdom into the system of State Shinto. In valorizing Okinawan culture while also facilitating its subordination to Japan, Itō was joined by other mainland intellectuals—those associated with Minzokugaku (Native Ethnology), such as Yanagita Kunio, and the Mingei (Folk Art) Movement, such as Yanagi Sōetsu. As these intellectuals celebrated the simplicity, honesty, and gentleness of the islanders and extolled the virtue of Okinawa as a “living treasure box of the Japanese past” (p. 74), they reinforced an Orientalist understanding of Okinawa as the exotic but still inferior other.

The Okinawan response to the shrine's conversion was complex, as seen in the reaction to the deification of Minamoto no Tametomo at the Okinawa Shrine, together with Shun-ten, Shō En, Shō Kei, and Shō Tai. The legend of Tametomo, a descendant of the Japanese emperor who had allegedly fathered the first Ryukyuan king, emphasized the preexisting connection between the islands and the mainland, which in turn helped legitimize Japan's annexation of Okinawa. Far from rejecting the legend, Okinawans often acceded to it. Stating that there was “no evidence to support or disprove the story,” Higashionna Kanjun, an Okinawan-born intellectual associated with the Mingei Movement in the mainland, rendered implicit support to the legend (p. 95). The Kunigami educational committee erected a memorial to mark the site of Tametomo's landing in “an attempt to produce its facticity” (p. 96). Iha Fuyū, another leading intellectual of Okinawa, emphasized the commensurability in religious structures between the Ryūkyū Kingdom and Japan, “inserting Okinawa's religion into the universe of Shinto” (p. 105) so as to claim a legitimate position for Okinawa within the Japanese nation-state.

Following World War II, the politics surrounding Shuri Castle became even more complex. As Okinawa came under US military rule from 1945 to 1972, heritage politics turned into an arena of three-way negotiations: the United States was interested in promoting an Okinawan identity independent from Japan to solidify the occupiers' control of the islands; Japan was eager to reclaim the islands from foreign hands; and Okinawa was ready to articulate some form of cultural autonomy from both, following the horrendous experiences of the Battle of Okinawa. Loo presents a dynamic picture of negotiations that unfolded among them, as she recounts activities pursued by American scholars such as George Kerr and Willard Hanna; governing entities such as USCAR (United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands), GRI (Government of the Ryukyu Islands), and the Japanese Ministry of Education; and local organizations such as the Okinawa Historic Sites Preservation Committee and the Committee for the Regeneration of Shureimon Gate. The reconstruction of Shuri Castle had to wait until after Okinawa's reversion to mainland Japan in 1972, however. The rebuilding of the castle finally went ahead in 1984, and the castle reopened to the public in 1992.

The richness of the historical accounts provided by Loo is clearly one of the strengths of the book. At the same time, its detail sometimes clouds the overall picture she is trying to draw, as seen in chapter 5 where she focuses on post-WWII dynamics. More work seems to be needed here in order to figure out the precise nature of heritage politics during and after the occupation. Disentangling the numerous and often overlapping networks of individuals and organizations mobilized from Okinawa, mainland Japan, and the United States and analyzing their heterogeneous and often conflicting interests surrounding the restoration of the castle might complicate Loo's current and rather sanguine assessment of postwar Okinawa's cultural autonomy: “Okinawan people took control of the definition of their culture and cultural heritage … and deployed it to articulate political positions vis-à-vis American occupation authorities and the Japanese state after Reversion” (p. 149).

Another issue obscured in Loo's accounts concerns gender. The tale of Okinawan heritage politics presented in the book is overwhelmingly masculine, with little to no involvement of women. However, at a critical juncture in her argument, women make a brief yet unforgettable appearance. Analyzing a 1942 Japanese documentary film on the Okinawa Shrine, Loo recounts a scene in which a group of Okinawan girls visited the shrine, bowed to the deity Tametomo, and displayed their “orderly, bodily submission to the shrine” (p. 98). The scene encapsulates the feminization of Okinawa vis-à-vis Japan, argues Loo. An exploration of such gendered symbolism, so central in the islands' incorporation into the mainland, combined with some accounts of how women engaged with heritage politics would have enriched the book's analysis.

Wendy Matsumura's The Limits of Okinawa examines small and often forgotten instances of grassroots resistance involving ordinary men and women on the islands from the 1890s to the 1930s. Utilizing rare archival documents, including records of protest songs, political petitions, and local newspaper accounts, Matsumura excavates little-known moments and movements of protest mobilizations that erupted across the islands, offering a series of mesmerizing stories of negotiations among Japanese capital, Okinawan leadership, and small cultivators and producers amid the islands' increasing integration into the expanding circuits of capital and empire. Revealing her sophisticated engagement with theory, moreover, she critically reassesses the stagism, economism, and Eurocentrism of classical Marxism, with Okinawa providing ample material for such reconsideration.

The picture Matsumura portrays of prewar Okinawa is dynamic and complex. Local leadership, comprised of former nobles and officials of the deposed kingdom, mainland-educated intellectuals, and emerging capitalists, constituted a heterogeneous entity. Neither pure collaborators nor resisters, they wore multiple hats—as anticolonial nationalists asserting Okinawa's self-control, as modernizers determined to transform “barbaric” customs and “primitive” behaviors of Okinawans to secure membership in the Japanese nation-state, and as petite bourgeoisie eager to exploit local labor in the name of “Okinawa for Okinawans.” As these leaders tried to realize their vision, they met repeated resistance from men and women on the ground—cultivators, fishermen, weavers, and merchants, among them—who refused to convert themselves into dead labor for capital or assimilated subjects for empire and insisted instead on preserving preexisting communal relations that were at the heart of their life world. Their acts of resistance were often short-lived and unsuccessful. However, as Matsumura argues, exploring the possibilities of resurgent subjectivities articulated by small cultivators and workers is an important and necessary step toward reimaging the islands' history, given the prevalence of “apocalyptic” narratives of Okinawa that always end with defeat and subjugation (p. 15).

The moments of rupture captured by Matsumura are fleeting and yet powerful. The Miyako Island Peasantry Movement from 1893 to 1895 demanded the abolition of the poll tax and customary payments to village officials, a practice originating from the kingdom era and kept alive under the Preservation of Old Customs Policy implemented by the Japanese government. While this policy allowed local bureaucrats—former nobles and officials of the kingdom turned functionaries of the new state—to reap economic benefits, it created increasingly impoverished conditions among small cultivators and producers. To protest their conditions, the villagers undertook a daring act, sending their representatives to the National Diet in Tokyo to plead their case. Not only that, several hundred villagers participated in a dramatic performance of “Jintōzei haishi no kuichā” (Song for the abolition of the poll tax), singing and dancing to express their discontent regarding the heavy tax burden as well as their collective will to envision a new way of life (p. 77).

In grassroots protestation in Okinawa, women played a prominent role. In the late 1890s, local leaders initiated the Movement to Reform Old Customs in which a transformation of local customs and habits, especially those involving gender relations, constituted a major goal. The movement was part of a larger drive, the aim of which was to fight against Japanese prejudice toward Okinawans and secure a space for Okinawa within the Japanese nation-state. One category of women who came under the leaders' reformist gaze were female textile weavers and peddlers, a group of “unruly” women whose economic autonomy, bodily mobility, and everyday habits violated the normative (i.e., Japanese) understanding of gender and thereby reinforced the perception of barbaric, primitive, and inferior Okinawa. A series of attempts were initiated to rationalize these women's economic activities, diminish their autonomy, and modernize their everyday lives. To the leaders' dismay, women refused to comply. They ignored the new regulation imposed on the production and sale of the textiles they made. A group of weavers went to the home of the head of the Naha Chamber of Commerce, threatening to break down the doors unless the regulation was rescinded. A meeting of the textile dealers' association was disrupted by another group of weavers, who “stormed the waiting rooms, offices, and houses of the association's officers to make sure that their displeasure was duly noted” (p. 109). As Matsumura argues, women's disorderly actions expressed “their desires to produce, live, play, reproduce, and make decisions about their bodies and their work on their own terms” (p. 114).

Following the recession after World War I, Okinawa became known as “Sago Palm hell,” a space full of unbearable misery where destitute people had no other choice but to eat the deadly palm fruit out of desperation. Amidst this economic crisis, the Kunigami region in the northern part of the main island became a major site of protest mobilization. Under the leadership of local Marxist activists who had returned from the mainland, the Ōgimi Village Reform Movement was started, challenging the village head who imposed policies of economic rationalization and austerity on the villagers but who took advantage of his position to fatten his own pockets. The outcome of the mobilization was surprising in more ways than one. Not only were the villagers successful in forcing the village head to resign, they also began a cooperative movement, the Ōgimi Consumer Cooperative, which had a direct tie to the Japan Proletarian Consumer Cooperative Alliance, and even created its pioneer wing, the Nakayoshikai, an organization modeled after the Soviet Young Pioneer Organization and involving more than 100 fifth graders from a local elementary school. The movement articulated a vision of social relations in which the villagers “had the power to make decisions that affect their own lives” (p. 181).

Tantalizingly, Matsumura concludes her book with the tale of Kushi Fusako, a legendary female writer from Okinawa whose 1932 story “Horobiyuku Ryūkyū onna no shuki” (Memoirs of a declining Ryukyuan woman), published in the mainland women's magazine Fujin Kōron, generated a storm of protest from male leaders associated with the Prefecture Association and the Okinawa Student Association. The story not only depicted grinding poverty and other hardships endured by local women (who stood as a metaphor for Okinawa), it also delivered a stinging critique of the assimilatory drive pursued by local elites whose disciplinary gaze focused on common people and especially women. In response to the protest, Kushi published an “apology” in which she, far from apologizing, shot back: “As it is customary in Okinawa that only people with power speak loudly while those without power or education were merely to follow their lead, it must have come as a complete shock to see an uneducated woman like myself daring to speak up.”Footnote ¹ After publishing this response, Kushi retreated into self-imposed silence, ending a budding career as a writer and disappearing into obscurity. Had Kushi turned her gaze to various moments of antagonism erupting across Okinawa, however, she might have been able to see that “a story of rising, rather than one of decline, could be told about her hometown,” Matsumura observes (p. 186).

The dramatic tale of Kushi Fusako is the stuff of legend, generating multiple interpretations and much speculation over the years. What Matsumura seems to take as a tragic story of the defeat and decline of a woman might offer different narratives. The story's main title, which speaks of women's (and thus Okinawa's) decline, was not Kushi's own title but something assigned by the magazine. Depicting innumerable difficulties endured by women, the story also offers a strong indictment of patriarchal domination, providing an example of female disruption rather than resignation. Finally, despite the popular belief that Kushi gave up her career as a writer following the controversy, she continued to write under different names, evincing a tenacious ability of survival and self-transformation.Footnote ² If anything, the legend of Kushi Fusako highlights the frequently incommensurable nature of the gendered interest of men and women, a point not yet fully explored by Matsumura as “women” are subsumed into the (genderless) category of “small producers and workers.”

40 Years since Reversion, edited by Ina Hein and Isabelle Prochaska-Meyer, is based on a conference held at the University of Vienna in 2012. Comprised of four sections (“History and Politics,” “Language,” “Representations and Images,” and “Changes and Transformation”), the proceedings present a picture of Okinawa with broad strokes, with a particular focus on the period since the end of World War II. The contributing authors, many of whom are associated with European institutions, extensively rely on published work by Japanese, Okinawan, and American scholars in their argumentations. For those versed in studies of Okinawa, the information contained in the volume is rather familiar. Yet this does not diminish the value of the proceedings, as matters concerning Okinawa require reiteration in the current geopolitical context where the island prefecture, despite its centrality in the region, continues to confront the problem of historical obscurity and indeed amnesia by Japanese and Americans alike. The topics addressed in the volume range from history to social movements, literature, linguistics, tourism, and religion, indicating the increasingly heterogeneous nature of the field of Okinawan studies.

Analyzing Okinawa's return to mainland Japan in 1972, Gabriele Vogt argues that the reversion constituted a failed moment of nation-building (p. 45). The much desired goal of a uniform national community, “Japan with Okinawa,” never materialized. Indeed, it was rejected by Okinawans who saw that the islands' return to the mainland would not bring economic parity or reduce the unfair burden of hosting US military facilities on their islands (p. 65). Disillusionment surrounding the reversion to Japanese administration lingered on years after the event, leading to criticism by such individuals as Chibana Shōichi, an Okinawan activist, and Ōe Kenzaburō, a Japanese intellectual.

Illuminating Okinawa's dissention and discontent from a different angle, Ina Hein focuses on Okinawan writers who “write back” (p. 192) to Japan to reclaim their identities. Drawing on analyses provided by scholars such as Shinjō Ikuo in Okinawa and Davinder Bhowmik in the United States, Hein highlights writerly strategies deployed by Sakiyama Tami and Medoruma Shun. The task these and other Okinawan writers face is multifaceted, she argues, as they must challenge the stereotypical view of Okinawa as exotic or victimized, recover the lost voices of the locals in the literary world, and challenge the hierarchical relation between Okinawan and Japanese literature.

The politicized nature of culture is also elaborated by Akamine Masanobu, the only Okinawan scholar who appears in the volume. Taking a stance against an essentialist view of Okinawa, he deploys a historicized perspective in his examination of local rituals of ancestor worship and reveals how the policies of the Ryūkyū Kingdom played a salient role in shaping local religious practices. Therefore an argument such as “ancestor worship forms the core of native beliefs” (p. 258) must be approached with caution, Akamine argues, as it presumes a timeless and dehistoricized Okinawa.

The individual arguments contained in the volume, and the collective understanding of “Okinawa” that emerges from them, are often in contrast to those provided by Loo and Matsumura. For example, Stanisly Meyer argues in his study of the Ryūkyū Disposition that the Preservation of Old Customs Policy was “not introduced in order to facilitate economic exploitation of the prefecture” but rather “to ease social tensions following the fall of the Kingdom” (p. 40). This understanding significantly differs from the one offered by Matsumura, who considers the same policy a political device that reshaped economic relations in post-disposition Okinawa and exacerbated material disparities between the emerging bourgeoisie and small cultivators and producers. As Tada Osamu explores the role played by Iwakiri Shōtaro, a Japanese developer, in the evolution of tourism in post-WWII Okinawa, and as Aleksandra Jarosz and Alfred Majewicz celebrate the Russian linguist Nikolay Nevskiy, who compiled the Miyako-language manuscript dictionary in the early decades of the twentieth century, Okinawans almost completely disappear from their discussions, leaving no trace of the historical agency that Matsumura and Loo so painstakingly reconstruct.

The contrast between 40 Years since Reversion and Matsumura's and Loo's work is especially salient in their respective approaches to the question of power and knowledge. In the above-mentioned piece by Jarosz and Majewicz, Nevskiy's act of “discovering” and “rescuing” minority languages (not only Miyako but also Ainu), his affiliation with leading imperial institutions (such as St. Petersburg Imperial University and the Hermitage Museum) at a time of European expansionism, and his association with Japanese intellectuals such as Yanagita Kunio and Orikuchi Shinobu are never examined in relation to imperial (and masculine) circuits of power and knowledge, the very topic Matsumura and Loo address. A disconnection between knowledge and power is also displayed by Sepp Linhart, whose piece focuses on the commemorative stamps issued in Okinawa and Japan since 1945. Admitting a difficulty in drawing any conclusion, he nevertheless characterizes Japanese and Okinawan stamps with Okinawan motifs as “somewhat similar to the stamps of lesser developed countries,” as all of them tend to “issue almost endless series of butterflies and the like” (p. 188). He then goes on to argue that the scarcity of representations of important social issues in Japanese commemorative stamps contrasts greatly to those in Germany. Germany issued commemorative stamps celebrating the liberation of prisoners in concentration camps on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of World War II, as well as a stamp calling for “No Violence against Women” and a series on “Women in German History,” showcasing the nation's awareness about the significance of women's issues. Japan has no parallels to these examples (p. 190). His use of binaries (developed vs. undeveloped; more socially aware vs. less socially aware) implicitly invokes a hierarchical ordering among Germany, Japan/Okinawa, and other and unnamed “lesser developed countries,” the very dynamic Matsumoto and Loo problematize in their work.

Finally, the figure of women plays a salient, though convoluted, role in 40 Years since Reversion. Inserted into the volume are “messages” provided by two Okinawan women. One, “Message from Okinawa I: Asato Eiko,” features a four-page message provided by Asato, a long-time activist, writer, and thinker. The message highlights the ongoing struggles in Henoko, a site of intense negotiations among Japanese, Americans, and Okinawans over the proposed relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. The other, “Message from Okinawa II: Ishikawa Mao,” features four photographic images (one of which is also on the cover of the volume) taken by Ishikawa, a well-known photographer whose critical work on the military and militarization in Okinawa circulates within and beyond the islands. One wonders what roles these women are expected to play, as they suddenly appear (and disappear) amid this volume full of European academic discourses. Are they in any way comparable to the women in Loo's account, who embodied the feminized subordination of Okinawa to the imperial order of things, or to the unruly women in Matsumura's account, who visibly challenged the dominant workings of power through their disorderly acts?

Read together, these three books create a productive occasion to rethink issues of class, gender, nation, and empire. They highlight the exceptional power “Okinawa” holds in creating a space for critical dialogue about empire and its legacies, the import of which goes well beyond the geographical confines of the islands and the disciplinary boundaries of Okinawan studies.