Myth, Protest and Struggle in Okinawa

Annexation and assimilation 33
fundamental political and social change that favoured merit-based promotion to
powerful positions. This would in turn result in the former ruling class members’
losing inherited positions of influence. By the same token, Jahana and his colleagues
realized that participation in national politics and having access to power in the
central government were important, in order to remove Narahara and the old
conservatives’ domination in Okinawa. 26
However, their political campaign yielded disappointing results for the Okinawa
Kurabu members. The Lower House decided to introduce the election of two Diet
members from Okinawa by issuing an Imperial Edict ‘when the time arrives’.
However, ‘the time’ was slow in coming. Even though Okinawa’s political participation
had been agreed upon in the Lower House in 1899, Parliamentary elections
did not commence formally in Okinawa until 1912. And only two members, as
opposed to five from other prefectures, were to be elected from Okinawa.
Furthermore, the Miyako and Yaeyama regions were excluded from national
elections until 1919. 27
In March 1900, Jahana proposed an increase in rural representatives to counter
the domination of Narahara and his allies in the Bank and, as a result, was removed
from the director’s position at the Okinawa Agricultural Bank. Some of his Okinawa
Kurabu members switched sides to co-operate with the conservatives (Ōsato 1969:
225–6). This development isolated Jahana. Unable to find employment because of
Narahara’s influence, he no longer had a place in Okinawa. Jahana died at the age
of 43 in 1908.
Smits provides an important analysis in English, which regards Jahana’s struggle
as revealing Okinawa’s ambiguous relations with Japan, as well as the unsettled
status of ‘Japan’ as a nation in the late nineteenth century. Importantly, Smits also
points out that Jahana’s struggle was a struggle against class divisions within
Okinawan society (2002: 112) – which was far from being an all-encompassing
‘Okinawan’ movement. His isolation was mainly due to his conflict with members
of the former aristocratic elite, who preserved the old Ryūkyūan social order
and delayed the establishment of non-aristocratic elite. Furthermore, Jahana’s
progressive movement was significantly detached from the rest of the society. The
Okinawan People’s Rights Movement was basically an elite movement, which
had knowledge of and access to the academic and political world of mainland Japan.
In this sense, Arakawa argues, Jahana’s ‘Okinawa Struggle’ was isolated from
the ordinary mass Okinawan population, in particular, the farmers in Okinawan
villages where he had his roots (Arakawa 1973: 207). Arakawa himself (1973,
1996, 2000b) has most intensely opposed the political strategy of attaching Okinawa
both institutionally and emotionally to the body politic of Japan – the strategy of
Jahana and Okinawa Kurabu’s movement.
It is important to note here that Arakawa’s criticism of Jahana’s movement was,
at the same time, criticism of the political thought and strategy of the reversion
movement that became dominant in the community of protest in Okinawa during
the 1960s. At the time, Arakawa was a leader of a group of Okinawan intellectuals
who opposed the strategy of demanding institutional integration with mainland
Japan. He likewise opposed relying on the notion that further institutional and