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Volume 8 | Issue 31 | Number 3 | Article ID 3394 | Jul 26, 2010 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Songs of War and Peace: Music and Memory in Okinawa 戦争 と平和の歌−−沖縄の音楽と記憶 James E. Roberson Songs of War and Peace: Music and not yet been brought to closure. Instead, as Memory in Okinawa Okinawan writer Medoruma Shun (2005) has recently written, the war is still too much an James E. Roberson everyday presence in Okinawa to talk of it as having passed, as being singularly in the past. The Battle of Okinawa is instead still a physical presence in the land, embodied in aging I—Sengo Zero-Nen survivors and their descendants and, as Chris Nelson’s (2008) work on “Dancing with the The year 2010 marks the 65th year since the Dead” also shows, the war and memories of it 1945 Battle of Okinawa between American and are archived, articulated and recalled in Japanese armed forces, the 50th year since the Okinawan cultural discourse, practice and signing of the Japan-US Security Treaty in performance. 1960, and the 38th year since Okinawa was officially returned from American to Japanese Memories of the Battle of Okinawa—as control in 1972. In May of 2010, after juggling Medoruma, Nelson and others suggest, and as I ill-conceived and unpopular alternativeargue here—are thus complexly interwoven proposals for the relocation of the American with the past, the present and the future. They military’s Futenma Airbase in Okinawa, the are a vital force, in the sense of being both short-lived Democratic Party’s Hatoyama living and important, because of the continuing Government capitulated to American demands everyday presences of the war in Okinawa, for the continuation of the original relocation among Okinawans, who also long for peace. plans, agreed upon in 1996 with the then ruling These memories and their multiple inscriptions Liberal Democratic Party, which call for the and engravings in Okinawan places, bodies and construction of a heliport at Camp Schwab, in minds can act, as Yelvington (2002) has Henoko, also in Okinawa. Despite this latest elsewhere and somewhat differently argued, as Japan-US agreement, or rather because of it, powerful resources in recollecting a past, in the controversial and much contested issue of giving cohesion to or in re-membering present Futenma Airbase’s return-as-relocation (see Inoue 2007) remains unresolved, especially for collective identities, and in authenticating both Okinawans. claims to that past and legitimating current actions, claims and contestations. Thus, for The Futenma Airbase was built during the example, when the Japanese Ministry of Battle of Okinawa on farmland, originally used Education attempted in 2007 to modify history for growing sugarcane and yams, which was textbooks to downplay the involvement of the appropriated from local villagers by theJapanese army in Okinawan civilians’ forced American military. It is thus one reminder that, suicides during the Battle of Okinawa, an as perhaps with all wars, the Battle of Okinawa estimated 110,000 people gathered in Ginowan has in many ways even now not yet ended, has to protest this rewriting of still vital memories. 1 8 | 31 | 3 APJ | JF This essay surveys the cultural politics of themselves were complexly participant, to memory and music in Okinawa by situating continuing conditions of militarization by both some of the songs that mark Okinawans’ American and Japanese forces, and to strongly journeys through the landscapes andheld yet fragile and contextually imagined imaginaries of war and peace. An abridged and dreams of peace. revised version of my paper “Memory and Music in Okinawa: The Cultural Politics of War My goal here, then, is to consider how songs in and Peace” (Roberson 2009), it also draws from Okinawa may be heard to constitute complex related work (Roberson 2007, 2010a, 2010b). sites of cultural memory and resistance. I The songs I describe here are primarily though contend that regardless, or because, of their not exclusively from the folk or new-folk minority voice, these songs need to be carefully (min’yō or shin-min’yō; also shima-uta) and listened to, especially by people from American “Uchinā Pop” (see Roberson 2003) genres. and Japanese centers of economic and political Though for certain songs I also draw attention power and imperialism. to particular musical elements, my primary II—Becoming Japanese focus is on song lyrics.1 I first describe songs that give voice to Okinawans’ experiences of In 1879, the Meiji Government of Japan assimilation and mobilization in the period unilaterally dissolved the Ryūkyūan Kingdom prior to the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. I then and established the Prefecture of Okinawa (see describe songs which recount the world of war Kerr 1958). Invoking a modernist rhetoric of experienced at home by Okinawans, and which progressive “civilization,” Japan subsequently sing of the sorrows of war and of the treasure embarked on the political-economic and of life. I next describe songs from the long cultural assimilation of Okinawa, employing a postwar period that sing of dreams for peace “totalizing vision of ‘Japaneseness’” in the and that protest the continuing presence of processes of making Ryūkyūans into proper American military bases and armed forces. Japanese imperial subjects (Morris-Suzuki 1998:26-8; Christy 1997:141-169). This As recorded and recalled, these Okinawan assimilationist dynamic involved a dialectic in songs comprise critical, contested, and at times which Japan was held up as the progressive contradictory sites of historical memory and of model of civilized modernity to overcome continuing social dialogue. The complexities of Okinawan backwardness. Japanese historian contemporary memory work in Okinawa involve Tomiyama Ichirō’s (1995) important work on both individual and collective identitieswar memory in Okinawa emphasizes the constructed within historical contexts framed everyday aspects of assimilation and the and fragmented by contending local, national, consequences of these for Okinawans. While and international forces and influences,language was in many ways the most important including those of (neo)colonialism andand debated issue in Okinawan cultural imperialism. Here, memories becomeassimilation, other cultural and religious “perilous” in the double sense described by practices (including Okinawan folk music) were Fujitani, White, and Yoneyama as “memories in also targeted as backward and in need of need of recuperation and as memories that reform. Such assimilation also included the continue to generate a sense of danger” extension of the Japanese military draft to (2001:3). The perilousness of memory in Okinawa, which was welcomed by members of Okinawa is related to processes ofthe Okinawan elite as a sign of Okinawa’s equal remembering and forgetting a war in which inclusion in the Japanese state (Ota 1996:56-7). nearly one third of the population on the main island perished but in which Okinawans The everyday and ideological dilemmas and 2 8 | 31 | 3 APJ | JF dynamics of Okinawa’s modernist/imperialist their men. The last verse is especially dense in assimilation are reflected and commented on in the work it performs as a lyrical site involved in a number of prewar Okinawan folk songs. One the making of imperial subjects:3 such song is Hadashi Kinrei no Uta (literally, Barefoot Prohibition Song), recorded in 1941, that sings of the prohibition on walking Tsuyoi Nipponjin barefoot promulgated in early 1941 as part of Men going forthrightly to the the Movement for the Improvement of Manners sacred war and Customs (Fūzoku Kairyō Undō). While ironically also referring to Okinawa as “Shūrei wives on the home front taking up no Kuni” (Land of Propriety) and Bunka“ hoes Okinawa” (Cultural Okinawa), Hadashi Kinrei warns about possible fines and other Advance the building of Greater embarrassing consequences if found barefoot East Asia in Naha. In part it also reflects the (self-) disciplining of, if not the attempt to eliminate, with the latent power of 3000 such everyday aspects of Okinawan years “backwardness.” (see Arakawa 1982:7; Nakahodo 1988:166). Be Proud, Be Proud! Prospering for a Thousand Generations Hadashi Kinrei may be heard both to reflect and to resist prewar assimilationist processes For Eight Thousand Generations, and practices. Okinawan writer and social critic Long Live the Japanese Empire! Arakawa Akira contends that, sung in Okinawan dialect and to sanshin2 accompaniment, Hadashi Kinrei uses music and the nuances of local language to Showing the attraction and allegiance of indirectly invert the pro-Japanese denotations Okinawans as members of the Japanese nation- of the lyrics. Such contradictions andstate, in what may be simultaneously heard as inversions suggest the folk manipulation of a song of professed patriotism and of music in expressing ambivalence toward propaganda, Tsuyoi Nipponjin remains a site of assimilationist programs, making music a memory marking Okinawan complicity in subtle if contradictory weapon of the weak (see Japan’s militarist imperialism. As Michael Arakawa 1982:8; Tomiyama 1998). Molasky points out, “Okinawans were not mere victims of Japanese colonialism and Tsuyoi Nipponjin (Strong Japanese), also imperialism, for many also aspired to be recorded in 1941, more clearly shows the recognized as fully fledged Japanese citizens strength of Japanese control and influence as and to partake of the fruits of Japanese power the embodiment of desirable modernity and the and prosperity” (Molasky 1999:14). Open (self-) inclusion of Okinawa(ns) in Japanese recognition and critique of such complicity imperialism. Extending to seven verses, Tsuyoi remains a contentious issue in postwar Nipponjin sings, in Japanese but to sanshin Okinawa, as is reflected in the work of accompaniment, of Japan as the land of the Medoruma Shun, who is critical of Okinawan emperor and gods, where strong and brave cultural amnesia regarding prewar and men are fighting a sacred war seisen( ), and wartime complicity in Japanese militarism and where the women are also strong, holy mothers imperialism (Molasky 2003:184; Medoruma (seibo) and angels caring for and supporting 2005).

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