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Since its incorporation into the Japanese nation-state in 1879, Okinawa has been seen by both Okinawans and Japanese as an exotic "South," both spatially and temporally distinct from modern Japan. In The Limits of Okinawa, Wendy Matsumura traces the emergence of this sense of Okinawan difference, showing how local and mainland capitalists, intellectuals, and politicians attempted to resolve clashes with labor by appealing to the idea of a unified Okinawan community. Their numerous confrontations with small producers and cultivators who refused to be exploited for the sake of this ideal produced and reproduced "Okinawa" as an organic, transhistorical entity. Informed by recent Marxist attempts to expand the understanding of the capitalist mode of production to include the production of subjectivity, Matsumura provides a new understanding of Okinawa's place in Japanese and world history, and it establishes a new locus for considering the relationships between empire, capital, nation, and identity.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. The Birth of Okinawa Prefecture and the Creation of Difference 27
2. The Miyako Island Peasantry Movement as an Event 49
3. Reforming Old Customs, Transforming Women's Work 79
4. The Impossibility of Plantation Sugar in Okinawa 115
5. Uneven Development and the Rejection of Economic Nationalism in "Sago Palm Hell" Okinawa 146
Conclusion. Living Labor and the Limits of Okinawan Community 182
Notes 189
Bibliography 247
Index 265
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Wendy Matsumura is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Furman University.
