Kawabata, Miki (2011) (Re)locating identities in the ancestral homeland: the complexities of belonging among the migrants from Peru in Okinawa. Mphil Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18464 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. (Re)locating Identities in the Ancestral Homeland: The Complexities of Belonging among the Migrants from Peru in Okinawa Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Miki Kawabata Department of Anthropology and Sociology School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 2011 1 Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 2 Abstract This dissertation examines the practices and discourses of migrants of Okinawan descent from Peru around one of the major turning points in their lives, the experience of (re)location to Okinawa, and explores their shifting sense of belonging through an ethnographic approach. Since the late 1980s, Nikkei-jin - people of Japanese descent - have come from Peru to live and work in Japan as a result of an economic downturn and socio- political instabilities in Peru, and labour shortages in Japan. Often subsumed under this category of Nikkei-jin are people of Okinawan descent, who are the focus of this study. Primarily based on intensive fieldwork between 1996 and 1998 in Okinawa City, this research explores various sites in which migrants from Peru in Okinawa construct, reflect, negotiate and reconfigure their identities. It looks into migrants’ economic activities, ritual participations, and social networks that affect their identity narratives and cultural negotiation processes. Through a historical analysis, it also examines how and why Okinawan-Peruvian migrants’ subjectivity is transformed in different political and socio-economic settings. The study finds that migrants’ experience of relocation to their ‘ancestral home’ did not necessarily lead to instant integration and identification with their local ‘co-ethnics’, due to their status as newcomers, downward mobility to working class and an inability to maximise their cultural capital in the new setting. As a consequence, while they came to be incorporated into Okinawan munch ū kinship, discovered Okinawan dimensions in what they had previously conceived unitarily as Nikkei and began to find ‘home’ in Okinawa, they also began engaging in a transnational way of belonging through forming social networks of their own, thus destabilising the unitary notion of ‘Okinawanness’. 3 Acknowledgement The debts I accumulated during this prolonged PhD project are many. I would like to thank first and foremost, my supervisor, Dr Dolores Martinez, without whose intellectual support and endless patience, this thesis would not have been completed. I also owe gratitude to the staff and research students of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who have provided such a stimulating and varied learning environment and my colleagues of the Department of Languages and Cultures of Japan and Korea at SOAS for their support and patience. In Okinawa and in Peru, I am most grateful to those who generously allowed me to take part in their lives. My deepest gratitude goes to the migrants, who are identified herein only by pseudonyms, for offering so much, sharing their experiences and memories with me, being generous with their time and enriching my life. In Okinawa, I am greately indebted to members of Koza Per ū-kai and Centro Cultural Hispano in Kadena for miscellaneous kindnesses I received. Thanks also to members of the Peace and Culture Promotion Section at Okinawa City Hall, Onga Takashi and Ishiki Katsumi in particular, Nakane Tsutomu at the Planning Section and Azama Chika at the Citizens Exchange Section, not only for being helpful and open with information but also for being good friends. Members of the International Section at Okinawa City Hall and Okinawa City International Associations also helped me to participate in various activities during my stay. Akamine Masanobu, Kumada Susumu, Sat ō Takehiro and other members of Okinawa Minzoku Gakkai welcomed me to the group and Tsuha Takashi helped me gain access to archives at the University of the Ryukyus, for which I am grateful. Thanks also to my fellow fieldworkers in Okinawa, Christopher T. Nelson and Masamichi S. Inoue for giving me much inspiration when our paths crossed and members of Uchin āguchi-kai in Okinawa city for welcoming me into the group. I am also greatly indebted to the Yonaha family for putting me up for the first six months of my fieldwork, and the Shima family for their generous hospitality during my visits back to Okinawa. For assistance in Peru, I am grateful to the members of Okinawa-shi Kyoyu-kai and Okinawa Prefecture Association of Peru. I am indebted in particular to Juan Shimabukuro Inami for his friendship and generosity during my visits to Peru. Thanks also to the Miyahira family for kindly providing me with a place to stay during my first visit to Lima, and to Doris Moromisato Misato, the late Andres Kishimoto and Amelia Morimoto for sharing their extensive knowledge on Nikkei in Peru. In Yokohama, Keiko Tanahara and Alvaro del Castillo offered assistance in countless ways over the years. The annual invitation to their Christmas dinner has not only encouraged me to continue with my prolonged study, but has given me an opportunity to gain new insights on Peruvians living outside Okinawa in Japan. 4 I am also indebted to Emori Akiko, Henrik von Platen and Rosie Sinden-Evans for checking my English at various stages of writing, Jens Franz for Checking my English translation of a German text, and above all Philip Bowman and Sarah Haigh for going through the thesis at the final stage of writing. For the shortcomings, the author alone is responsible. I wish to express my appreciation for the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee for providing helpful supplementary grants for my fieldwork. Finally, I would like to express my profoundest gratitude to my family, migrants themselves, for their unconditional support. It was the journey that I took with them that inspired me to embark on this project in the first place. 5 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgement................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents .................................................................................................... 6 List of Figures ......................................................................................................... 8 Note on the Text...................................................................................................... 9 Glossary of Foreign Words ................................................................................... 10 Maps ................................................................................................................... 13 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 17 1.1 Background to the Study (1): The 1990 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act..................................................................................... 20 1.2 Background to the Study (2): The Studies on the Nikkei population in Japan ............................................................................................................... 23 1.3 Anthropology and Migration: Transnationalsim, Diaspora, and Return Migration............................................................................................... 26 1.4 On Positionality and Research Methodology.............................................. 32 1.5 Organisation of the Chapters....................................................................... 38 Chapter 2 The Formation of Okinawan Subjectivity ........................................... 41 2.1 From Prehistory to the ‘Great Era of Trade’ ............................................... 42 2.2 The Satsuma Invasion ................................................................................. 45 2.3 Meiji Government and the Making of Okinawa Prefecture........................ 47 2.4 The ‘Emigration