IMPASSE AT MCAS FUTENMA

In 1960, a Japanese prime minister was forced to resign after he committed Japan to an unpopular security relationship with the United States. In 2010, exactly fifty years later, the security relationship with the United States, centered on the stationing of a vast U.S. base complex in Japan, has unseated a prime minister who came to office just last year with an over 70 percent approval rating. In the small southern prefecture of Okinawa, where 75 percent of the U.S. military in Japan is stationed, the continued presence of the unpopular Futenma air base has become a lodestone for Okinawan frustration. High-level talks to remove Futenma from the crowded city of Ginowan have been ongoing since 1996, yet nothing has been accomplished. On 25 April 2010, an estimated 90,000 people rallied in Okinawa and demanded the base be removed from the prefecture completely, and not simply relocated to a location near the city of Nago. This essay attempts to explain Washington's central role in creating the problem and argues that Futenma is an unnecessary burden on the people of Okinawa and on cash-strapped Japanese and American taxpayers.     

Uchinaa Pop: Place and Identity in Contemporary Okinawan Popular Music

Since the early 1990s, Uchinaa (Okinawan) Pop music has become popular in mainland Japan and abroad. Okinawan groups such as Kina Shoukichi and Champloose, the Rinken Band, and the Nenes have been perceived as Japan's contribution to “world music.” Certainly part of the appeal of such new Okinawan music lies in innovative and enjoyable hybrid syntheses of traditional Okinawan folk music with ”Western” musical styles and instruments. However, there are other levels of cultural and political significance reflected and constructed within the music that are silenced by writing and audiences that focus only on its colorful “ethnic” appeal. This article examines the cultural politics of the images of Okinawa – as both place and space – that are constructed within Uchinaa Pop music. The author argues that these images construct “Okinawa” as internally hybrid and, thereby, as marked by differences from mainland Japan, including linguistic and cultural distinctiveness, a(n endangered) purity of heart, closeness to nature, and a proud and sometimes overtly political defense of Okinawan identity. The author suggests that such musically constructed images of Okinawan hybridity and difference must be understood within a set of national and international political-economic dynamics that render any simple listening to Uchinaa Pop problematic.     

Playing Base Politics in a Global Strategic Theater: Futenma Relocation,the G-8 Summit,and Okinawa

In late 1995, a culmination of events on Japan's southernmost island of Okinawa, home to over 70 percent of U.S. military facilities in Japan, both threatened the future of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and posed a direct challenge to the contradictory legacies of Japan's postwar system of constitutional democracy. Almost five years later, in July 2000, in anticipation of the gathering of heads of state at the Okinawa 2000 G-8 Summit, Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit the island in over forty years. Speaking at the Cornerstone of Peace, a monument built in memory of the only ground war fought on Japanese soil between Japanese and U.S. forces in World War II, Clinton reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance – and Okinawa's role within it – to peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region. Yet in Okinawa the nature and constitution of peace itself has never been a political given. This article traces the politics surrounding the U.S. military presence over this period, delving into the deeper historical, political, and social issues at stake for both this small island prefecture and for parts of the world beyond.     

Okinawa and the Nago heliport problem in the US-Japan relationship

The impact of the decision about when and if the United States Marine Corp Air Station will be relocated in Okinawa reverberates beyond the prefectural shores. It has the potential to upset the G-8 Summit, scheduled to be held in Nago City in July 2000, as well as to affect the strategic relationship between the US and Japan. In this article, Robert Eldridge, Post-doctoral Fellow at the Suntory Foundation, Osaka, reviews the history of this complicated problem. He argues that the US and Japan must continue to make progress addressing Okinawan requests and concerns. Ameliorating Okinawa” s burden, while at the same time more actively seeking public understanding and suppor t of the US-Japan security relationship and Japan's role in that relationship, as well as increasing Japan's ability to cooperate in times of emergency, is in the interest of both countries.     

The United States and East Asia in an age of financialization

This article starts from Peter Gowan's notion of a Dollar-Wall Street Regime (DWSR) characterized by financial deregulation, the dollar as the world's currency, large international capital flows, and frequent financial crises. The author argues that the DWSR has relied on a special economic relationship between the United States and East Asia, characterized by large East Asian trade and current account surpluses with the United States and the investment of East Asian dollar holdings in U.S. capital markets. For some time both parties benefited from this relationship, but eventually it gave rise to financial crises in East Asia. Thus, Japan's financial crisis around 1990 and the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis are both related to economic over-accumulation caused by the buildup of currency reserves through trade with the United States. Attempts at East Asian monetary integration since 1997 are viewed as a potential challenge to the DWSR. These attempts have however been blocked or rendered harmless by regional divisions as well as by U.S. resistance. While an East Asian political challenge to theDWSRis unlikely for the time being, the special U.S.-East Asian economic relationship may become substantially weakened by the growing problems of the U.S. economy.     

The U.S. military and sexual violence against women

Abstract

The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS) created the “Notes from the Field” section in 1992 in an attempt to bring BCAS closer to its activist origins and goals by publishing brief reports on events and issues of particular concern in the world today. Not intended to duplicate BCAS's usual in-depth and well-documented analysis and research, these reports are meant to be a less formal equivalent of “field notes” describing what is happening or being debated or studied out there in the world of action. Although analysis is usually a valuable part of these presentations, the “Notes” are more akin to urgent notices or offerings for discussion. The name “Notes from the Field” is not meant to imply the colonialist concept of people reporting back from the so-called Third World, and even though the name can be seen to loosely apply to the field of Asian studies, it does not refer to reporting on the more strictly academic aspects of fields of study within academia. The hope is that the information and opinions presented in these “Notes from the Field” will inspire readers to concern themselves with issues that matter, either through further study and analysis or by speaking out or taking action more directly.

It has been reported that on 4 September 1995 two U.S. Marines and one U.S. Navy man stationed at Camp Hansen Marine Base in Kin, Okinawa, raped a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl. This situation caught the Okinawan, Japanese, and international media's attention, brought out an Okinawan demonstration of 90,000 people in the latest of “U.S. Bases Out Of Okinawa” demonstrations that go back at least to 1972 with the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, made apologies by U.S. president Clinton mandatory, and resulted in the turning over of the three servicemen to the justice of Japanese courts, itself an act reflecting the need of the U.S. military and civilian authorities to try to defuse the situation.     

The Okinawa “Effect” in US–Japan Alliance Politics

Abstract

Discontent over US military bases in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture has long been a prominent “thorn in the side” of US–Japan relations. But what exactly has been the effect of Okinawa’s base politics on the management of the alliance? We examine Okinawa’s significance on the US–Japan alliance—the “Okinawa effect”—in terms of the alliance’s strategic coherence. Through an examination of the post–Cold War history of the base issue, we argue that, while there little to suggest that the Okinawa issue has undermined the alliance’s strategic effectiveness, alliance efficiency in dealing with burden sharing problems has been diminished, at times substantially. While reduced efficiency may often be inevitable in alliances between democracies, this persistent inability to resolve burden sharing disputes in the Okinawan case means that there is still potential for deteriorating efficiency to eventually undermine the alliance’s solidarity and effectiveness.     

金融危机与东南亚地区国际关系的新变化

金融危机使东南亚各国面对一系列严峻挑战 ,也使该地区的国际关系发生重大而深远的变化。东盟主导东南亚地区事务的能力受到了削弱。中美日等大国的影响力增强了。尤其是美国 ,利用这次金融危机 ,得到了许多它平时得不到的东西。金融危机之后 ,东南亚地区形成了由美、日、中和东盟四足鼎立的政治经济格局。     

The transformation of hi no maru in postwar Okinawa: from symbol of hope to object of contempt

Starting in the early 1950s, the Japanese flag hi no maru was a cherished symbol in Okinawa of the movement for an end to the postwar U.S. military occupation and reversion to Japanese sovereignty. The flag represented an appeal for liberation from U.S. military rule that dragged on for twenty years (1945–1972) after mainland Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952; and, for elimination, or at least reduction, of the overwhelming size and number of American bases on the island. However, the 1969 Okinawa Reversion Agreement between the U.S. and Japanese governments broke both of the Japanese government’s promises that, after reversion, Okinawa would have no nuclear weapons, and that U.S. bases would be reduced to mainland levels. The grossly disproportionate U.S. military remains to this day, and a “secret agreement” permits the United States to bring back nuclear weapons. Today many in Okinawa associate hi no maru with this discriminatory policy which imposes 74 percent of the total U.S. military presence in Japan on this small island prefecture comprising 0.2 percent of the nation’s land area. For historians, the flag also represents atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War and the Japanese government’s continuing reluctance to acknowledge them.     

Transnational Migrants,Globalization Processes,and Regimes of Power and Knowledge

This article situates the Bush administration's new strategy in the historical context of the international capitalist order established by the United States at the end of the 1940s and argues that this order, though extraordinarily successful for some decades, is now in crisis. The unique capitalist international community that the United States established under its primacy revived international capitalism while preventing geopolitical rivalries between the main capitalist centers. The leading sectors of U.S. business have become dependent on the preservation of the unipolar primacy order for its own economic security and expansion while the American domestic political economy has failed to revive as an industrial economy meeting the rules of international economics, exhibiting growing problems with current account deficits and rising levels of debt. To manage the resulting tensions between the orientation of American transnational sectors and problems in the domestic American political economy, the United States has developed an international monetary and financial regime that is destabilizing and dependent upon the preservation of American political primacy over the capitalist world. But the Soviet collapse has destabilized the primacy system, while the dominant sections of American capitalism are committed to rebuilding it. The Bush administration is seeking to rebuild U.S. primacy, using U.S. military dominance. But this carries very high risks.     

Therapies of Resistance? Yuta,Help-seeking,and Identity in Okinawa

In contemporary Okinawa shamanism and psychiatry are both employed by Okinawans to bring relief from what are understood to be godly or psychiatric interventions in their lives. This paper examines some of the reasons that shamanism is still popular and well-patronized in a society that is part of one of the world's most developed nations. By situating the role of shamans within a historical context, it becomes clear that repression of these women has taken place at a number of junctures in Okinawan history, mainly because they were seen as “backward,” “primitive,” or “too” Okinawan. In other words, their primary identity as Okinawans led those in political power to attempt to remove them from being socially acceptable, forcing them underground as the state reinvented itself to suit broader political strategies. Notwithstanding almost four centuries of discrimination and attempted repression, shamans continue to prosper in contemporary society, using markers of Okinawan identity (in particular ancestor worship) to legitimate their roles as therapists and healers. Patients, too, hybridize both systems today in informed and idiosyncratic ways, moving comfortably between treatment regimes. Both shamans and psychiatrists are perceived as therapists in this article.     

The political economy of the dollar and the yen in East Asia

From the early 1980s until 1997 large amounts of Japan's current account dollar surplus were invested in U.S. Treasury securities. This economic relationship developed into an “alliance” sustained by the economic policies of U.S. and Japanese authorities. The U.S.-Japanese alliance indirectly promoted East Asian export-led growth during 1985–95. However, policies associated with the U.S.-Japanese alliance also contributed significantly to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. During the past years Japan has launched a number of initiatives for aid and regional monetary co-operation with the aim of internationalising the yen and redirecting regional current account surplus flows to go within the region, rather than being invested in the United States. The article assesses the viability of this regional challenge to U.S. monetary hegemony.     

Waging Peace on Okinawa

“Waging Peace on Okinawa” examines peace discourses as enacted in tours of battle sites and war (peace) memorials on the main island of Okinawa. Pointing out linkages with and divergences from mainland Japanese peace practices, the essay focuses on “peace guides” that have emerged as the backbone of educational tours that cater to Okinawan and, especially, mainland Japanese schoolchildren. Staffed by volunteers in conjunction with private and public organizations, peace guide tours and their supporting materials endeavor to promote peace by conveying a historical knowledge of the Battle of Okinawa that is more richly contextualized – “complete” – than that which is typically found in official textbooks, commercial tours, and patriotic pilgrimages. “Complete” in this context implies open discussion – even highlighting – of the violence and discrimination Okinawan civilians suffered at the hands of Japanese during the battle, but it also signals discriminatory treatment toward Okinawans before and beyond the battle (the most concrete example of the latter being the maintenance of U.S. military bases under the U.S.-Japan security arrangement). Peace guides and their supporters thus find themselves in a battle over historical representation that arguably has more to do with immediate political and economic issues than with setting the historical record straight.     

U.S. hegemony and Southeast Asia

The United States has exerted a major influence on Southeast Asia, especially since World War II. As both a promoter of neoliberal reform and as the key strategic actor in the wider East Asian region, the impact of U.S. power has been immense. But both the Asian economic crisis and its aftermath, and the more recent “war on terror,” have highlighted the contradictory impact of evolving U.S. foreign policy and intervention in the region. At both an elite and a mass level there is evidence of resentment about, and hostility toward, U.S. policy and its perceived negative effects. This article outlines how U.S. foreign policy has impacted the region in the economic, political, and security spheres, and argues that not only has it frequently not achieved its goals, but it may in fact be undermining both America's long-term hegemonic position in the region and any prospects for political liberalization.     

Cocaine's Long March North, 1900–2010

This essay charts the entanglements and “blowback” effects of U.S. policy toward Latin American drug exports over the last century as the backdrop to today's cascading drug violence in northern Mexico. The history of cocaine reveals a series of major geopolitical shifts (closely related to U.S. interdictionist drug war policies) that bring drug commodity chains, illicit trafficking centers, and conflicts, over the long run, closer to the United States. It analyzes shifts from initial legal cocaine and small‐time postwar smuggling of the central Andes to the concentrating 1970s–1990s “cartel” epicenter in northern Andean Colombia, to the 1990s political shift north to Mexican transhipment and organizational leadership. Violence around cocaine has intensified at every step, and the present conflict portends another shift in the chain.     

Diplomatic Objectives in Trade Politics: The Development of the China-Japan-Korea FTA

This article seeks to analyze the development of free trade agreement (FTA) policies adopted by China, Japan, and South Korea with particular interests in the trilateral FTA. It seeks to address what the determinant factors that have conditioned the development of the trilateral FTA are. While the three governments began the informal joint study of the trilateral FTA in 2003, they pursued diverse trade strategies that disturbed a shift to formal negotiations. However, China's strategy to hedge against the US influence in East Asia became a catalyst in shifting from the long-lasting study stage to the launching of negotiations. Moreover, Japan's strategy to participate in TPP negotiations as a soft balancing against China through closer political linkages with the United States weakened China's and South Korea's willingness to engage in the trilateral FTA positively. Thus, the three countries’ commitments to the trilateral FTA were primarily confined by their specific diplomatic objectives responding to the political-economic evolutions in the Asia-Pacific region.     

Peter Gowan's “American grand strategy”

While this article broadly agrees with Peter Gowan's concern about the new militarism of the United States and the appalling consequences that have emerged as a result of U.S. preemption in Iraq, it questions the extent to which his portrait of U.S. hegemony addresses all the relevant issues as they affect the Asian region. Given the numerical dominance of Asia in world population and the rising power of China and India, how Gowan's “American Grand Strategy” applies to this part of the world is of fundamental importance to the relevance and sustainability of his argument. Part 1 on U.S. economic hegemony argues that U.S. capital has not been an unmitigated evil for India and where U.S. interests have been damaging they are not uniquely so: the European Union's economic policies have also been deeply damaging even though Europe is not a hegemon. Part 2 on U.S. political hegemony argues that bringing Pakistan and India into the U.S. alliance system has been beneficial for regional security and domestic political-ethnic stability. Part 3 considers responses to U.S. hegemony, arguing that this supremacy is more fragile than Gowan assumes because new powers, such as China and India, have long-term strategies to reduce their dependency. The conclusion suggests that despite widespread criticism and dissatisfaction with the nature of U.S. engagement in Asia, the dominant view in the region is one that sees the United States as a useful wedge between the emerging interests of China, India, and Japan. In short, the “American Grand Strategy” is not as negative, overwhelming, or as unpopular as Gowan suggests.     

American policy toward Beijing, 1989–1990: The role of president Bush and the White House staff

The Tiananmen massacre of June 1989 created a major crisis in U.S. policy toward China. President Bush and his aides on the National Security Council staff took the lead in formulating the U.S. response to the crisis. The president took charge personally in dealing with various issues during the next two years. He strove hard to maintain a balanced policy that would allow for continued U.S. involvement with the people and leaders of China. In the crisis atmosphere of 1989–1990, the president appeared to judge that it was important to narrow sharply the circle of officials who would manage U.S. policy toward China. In part, this was because the president was attempting to strike a difficult balance in U.S. policy. On the one hand, he was attempting to elicit positive gestures from Beijing's beleaguered leaders in the wake of Tiananmen. On the other hand, he was attempting to avoid what he judged were overly punitive and counterproductive U.S. measures against China, which were being pressed on the administration by U.S. leaders in the Congress, media and elsewhere. The president and his close advisors took steps to ensure that State Department and other U.S. officials avoided comment on the most sensitive policy issue of 1990—the extension of most-favored-nation tariff treatment to China. By the end of 1990, however, the president's policy efforts had not stilled congressional debate or restored a consensus in U.S. China policy. President Bush still labored under the misperception in many quarters that he was less interested than others in human rights in China, was overly attentive to the interests of Chinese leaders, and stressed excessively China's alleged strategic importance for the United States. In fact, the Chinese government's relatively constructive role in world affairs, especially over such vital issues as the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf crisis, appeared to do more to win U.S. support for the president's carefully balanced approach to China than the efforts by administrative leaders to explain the policy.     

U.S. COURT RULES IN THE “OKINAWA DUGONG” CASE

In January 2008, a U.S. federal court in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. Defense Department's plans to construct a new U.S. offshore Marine airbase in Okinawa violated the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting a Japanese “national monument,” the endangered Okinawa dugong. This article discusses the background and trajectory of the lawsuit and the implications of this judgment. The outcome of this lawsuit is expected to improve processes of evaluating and managing environmental and other social impacts of U.S. military forces on hosting communities in Okinawa/Japan. The case also demonstrates the potential of transnational civil society actors to overcome a deficient democratic system within one state. The expanded theater of the anti‐base Okinawans' protest brought them new allies while avoiding difficult and unnecessary conflict on the ground at home.     

Japanese Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Balancing Economy and Security

Abstract

Although the quest for oil has long been a central concern for resource-poor Japan, its foreign policy in the Middle East does not simply reflect a mercantilist interest in the region's resources. Its desire to remain close to the United States during the North Korea crisis and its nascent competition with China are also critical factors in Japan's Middle East policy. However, Japan lacks an integrated strategy toward the Middle East and as a result the various components of its policy are not always compatible. Hence, while Japan has firmly backed the Bush administration's Iraq policies, and begun discussing a possible free-trade agreement with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, it has also, until quite recently, simultaneously pursued closer relations with Iran. In lieu of coherent regional strategy, Japan instead possesses a clearly prioritized sense of its interests in the region.