Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Okinawa’s colonial legacies from a layered perspective, traversing international, national and sub-national spheres to illuminate a decentred perspective on the contested concept of security which incorporates key political, commercial, societal and academic actors.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines Okinawa’s colonial legacies from a layered perspective, traversing international, national and sub-national (local) contexts. By adapting a synthesis of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and qualitative content analysis to a risk-based theoretical framework, the discussion reveals how intersections between stakeholders such as ministers of state, political parties, mass media, commercial interests (private-sector businesses), local government and a diverse range of activists, have created a highly complex, asymmetrical tapestry of layers within Okinawan society, all of which aspire to realise a subtly or starkly differing state of security within the postcolonial space that demarcates contemporary Okinawa. These different concepts of security are articulated via competing and contradictory narratives. Ultimately, it is argued that multi-fold layers of security on Okinawa are misrepresented and decoupled from one another to the point where key actors are not mutually engaging empathetically or extensively enough to address a number of critical (and mostly shared) challenges facing the Islands and their inhabitants. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that this decoupling process is the result of complex colonial legacies, but cannot be solely or satisfactorily accounted for only by the postcolonial dialectics present within this confined space. Massive material power and resource imbalances between the US military, Government of Japan (GoJ) and the Prefectural Government of Okinawa are in one sense a function of colonial legacy, but their contemporary interactions have created a more nuanced reality than a simplistic decolonising perspective, from a US or Japanese-centric viewpoint, can provide. Therein, in response, the paper proposes that multiple, decentred narratives be integrated via the creation of a targeted dialogue mechanism that incorporates political, commercial, societal and academic contributors in order to galvanize the chronically diffuse interests that have resulted from this discursive "chanpuru" on Okinawa.