The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community

by Wendy Matsumura

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822358015
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	03/23/2015
Series:	Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Wendy Matsumura is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Furman University.

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan - Louise Young

"A model of clarity and rigor, Wendy Matsumura's book examines the formation of 'Okinawa' as both idea and socio-spatial form under the establishment of the Japanese nation-state. This riveting story of how Okinawan elites mobilized cultural difference to advance their own interests under the new regime and how small producers refused to go along illuminates the micropolitics of capitalism and the everyday possibilities of revolution. A provocative response to the Okinawan obsessions of Japan's twentieth century."

Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa - Christopher T. Nelson

"The Limits of Okinawa is the most historically rich, theoretically integrated work about Okinawa to appear in English. Wendy Matsumura has written a thoughtful, complex, and convincing book that speaks to critical questions about colonial domination, capitalist transformation, and the possibilities for freedom and autonomy. It is a superb work that should find a broad readership among historians of Japan, as well as historians, anthropologists, and others more broadly concerned with colonialism and capitalist modernity."

Editorial Reviews

"The Limits of Okinawa is the most historically rich, theoretically integrated work about Okinawa to appear in English. Wendy Matsumura has written a thoughtful, complex, and convincing book that speaks to critical questions about colonial domination, capitalist transformation, and the possibilities for freedom and autonomy. It is a superb work that should find a broad readership among historians of Japan, as well as historians, anthropologists, and others more broadly concerned with colonialism and capitalist modernity."

Dancing with the Dead: Memory, Performance, and Everyday Life in Postwar Okinawa - Christopher T. Nelson

"A model of clarity and rigor, Wendy Matsumura's book examines the formation of 'Okinawa' as both idea and socio-spatial form under the establishment of the Japanese nation-state. This riveting story of how Okinawan elites mobilized cultural difference to advance their own interests under the new regime and how small producers refused to go along illuminates the micropolitics of capitalism and the everyday possibilities of revolution. A provocative response to the Okinawan obsessions of Japan's twentieth century."

Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan - Louise Young

"A model of clarity and rigor, Wendy Matsumura's book examines the formation of 'Okinawa' as both idea and socio-spatial form under the establishment of the Japanese nation-state. This riveting story of how Okinawan elites mobilized cultural difference to advance their own interests under the new regime and how small producers refused to go along illuminates the micro-politics of capitalism and the everyday possibilities of revolution. A provocative response to the Okinawan obsessions of Japan's twentieth century."

Louise Young

"This is by far the best history available in English of Okinawa between 1879, when it was forcibly annexed by Japan, and the depression years of the 1930s. Appropriately focusing on economics, Matsumura persuasively applies current interpretations of Marxist theory to show the political, social and cultural effects of corporate and government efforts to make of Okinawans what Marx called 'dead labor' for the sugar and textile industries, and describes how workers and farmers resisted them."

Left History - Steve Rabson

"Matsumura’s compelling and theory-informed account of anticapitalist struggles by small producers and cultivators against both local and national agents of political, economic, and sociocultural transformation offers a new perspective on the relationships between colonialism, capitalism, and identity formation. The book is a valuable resource not only for historians, anthropologists, and sociologists who are interested in Japan and Okinawa but also for other scholars who are more broadly concerned with the micropolitics of socioeconomic transformation under colonialism."

Journal of Japanese Studies - Taku Suzuki

"[The Limits of Okinawa] supplies a previously unexplored and highly convincing account of the historical struggles of small producer communities – analysing the interactions between their peasantries, local elites and the Japanese state.... Matsumura masterfully injects drama and intrigue to embellish what is already a rigorous analysis of Okinawa’s pre-war socio-economic and political history."

History - Ra Mason

"Wendy Matsumura has crafted a well-documented, theory-heavy account of labor and identity along the colonial periphery of imperial Japan. . . . The Limits of Okinawa is a must-read for anyone interested in the co-production of industrialization and colonialism, in Japan and the world."

Christopher Gerteisn Historical Review

"...The Limits of Okinawa is indispensible to specialists simply for the stories that it tells. However, its attention to historiography and theory makes it equally relevant to nonspecialists."

Marx & Philosophy Review of Books - James Rhys Edwards

"Wendy Matsumura has crafted a well-documented, theory-heavy account of labor and identity along the colonial periphery of imperial Japan. . . . The Limits of Okinawa is a must-read for anyone interested in the co-production of industrialization and colonialism, in Japan and the world."

American Historical Review - Christopher Gerteis