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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the discourses around the proposal to develop a tropical research center in Iriomote between 1959 and 1972. It examines how imperial ideas about agricultural development and Cold War ambitions were projected onto the island, and why locals were enthusiastic about the proposal.

Paper long abstract

Between the late 1950s and early 1960s, Japanese policymakers and scientists envisioned transforming Iriomote—the largest island of the Yaeyama archipelago, south of Okinawa—into a living laboratory for tropical research. Spearheaded by Japanese politician Takaoka Daisuke, Iriomote was imagined as a “peace base,” a counterpart to the American military bases in Okinawa, designed both to foster relations with Okinawans to support eventual reversion and to advance Japan’s foreign policy ambitions in Southeast Asia. Japanese scientists enthusiastically supported this proposal, calling the island a “second Taiwan,” a comparable ecological zone suited to training a new generation of technical experts in tropical agriculture in the same manner as the former colony. Long suffering from underdevelopment, locals on Iriomote welcomed the attention, interpreting the vision to establish Iriomote as a “second Taiwan” not as a colonial project but as an economic proposal that would turn the island into an important center of trade between Japan and Southeast Asia. Although the proposal never materialized due to differing visions of development held by American Occupation officials, this paper argues that the discourses surrounding the Tropical Research Center embodied the imbrication of imperial memory and postwar development, as well as the colonial relationship between Okinawa and Japan. By tracing how policymakers, scientists, and local actors mobilized the island’s landscapes and Japan’s colonial legacies, this study reconsiders tropical research and agrarian development not as mere scientific enterprises but as vital sites for interrogating the entangled boundaries between empire, environment, and expertise in the twentieth-century Asia-Pacific.