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The Abe State and Okinawan Protest – High Noon 2018
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Extract
For more than two decades, the Asia-Pacific Journal has paid close attention to the “Okinawa problem.” However, today that “problem” becomes increasingly complex and difficult to grasp, even as it enters a major, possibly decisive, moment. The more the crisis deepens, the less it is covered by mainstream national and global media. This essay resumes the situation as of August 2018, and reflects on the significance of the 27 July move by Okinawa prefecture towards halting base construction works at Henoko-Oura Bay.
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References
Notes
1 This paper is based on the talk by the author at Leeds University on 29 May on the occasion of the launch of the second, revised (paperback) edition of his co-authored (with Satoko Oka Norimatsu) Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, (Lanhan, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018). It draws on some material from the book, updates it, and includes a discussion of the dramatic Okinawan events of late July 2018 (see section 7 below).
2 A further court case, details omitted here, was launched in July 2017 by the prefecture seeking to stop the state's moving to reclaim without prefectural license to crush coral and rock. It was dismissed in February 2018.
3 “Dosha tonyu jiki semaru, umetate no menseki no 4%,” Okinawa taimusu, 27 July 2018.
4 McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands, pp. 166-172.
5 “Henoko ‘koji no eikyo rekizen,‘ IUCN senmonka ga shisatsu,” Ryukyu shimpo, 24 March 2018.
6 McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands, pp. 53-54.
7 For my translation of a Yamashiro interview, see “There will be no stopping the Okinawan resistance: An interview with Yamashiro Hiroji,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 1 August 2017.
8 In most democratic countries a suspect may be held in police custody for up to four days before indictment or release. In Japan it is 23 days. (Silvia Croydon, The Politics of Police Detention in Japan: Consensus of Convenience, Oxford, Clarendon Studies in Criminology, 2016). The term was arbitrarily extended in Yamashiro's case by resort to serial arrest on slightly different charges.
9 McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands, pp. 53-54.
10 “So one of the things, I think, that's very important is that the Prime Minister of Japan is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment, as he should. And we make the best military equipment, by far. He'll be purchasing it from the United States,” (The White House, Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Abe of Japan in Joint Press Conference,” Tokyo, 6 November 2017.)
11 The Associated Press, “Japan Pledges to Reduce Plutonium, but Doesn't Say How,” New York Times, 31 July 2018.
12 Akiba told the 2009 Commission in Washington that he found “very persuasive” the idea of re-establishing nuclear storage facilities at Henoko.
13 Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review, Washington, February 2018.
14 That document is known as the “Akiba Memo” (from Akiba Takeo, then Minister at the Japanese embassy in Washington and as of 2018 Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. For photographic reproduction of the document, Haruna Mikio, “Akiba Memo – Amerika kaku senryaku e no Nihon no kakusareta yokyu,” Sekai, April 2018, pp. 69-78. For discussion see Gregory Kulacki, “Nuclear hawks take the reins in Tokyo,” Union of Concerned Scientists, 16 February 2018, also Yukiyo Zaha, “Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister Akiba denies making his 2009 statement that proposing nuclear storage site on Okinawa or Guam would be ‘persuasive,‘ recorded in U.S. Congressional memo,” Ryukyu shimpo, 6 March 2018; and interpellations in the Diet's Defence and Foreign Relations Committee on 20 and 26 March 2018 between the Japan Communist Party's Inoue Satoshi and Foreign Minister Kono Taro.
15 See the reminiscences of Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Bloomsbury Publications, 2017, and Ellsberg's interview with Fairfax media in Peter Hannam, “Setting the world alight,” Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2018.
16 Hideki Yoshikawa, “US military base construction at Henoko-Oura Bay and the Okinawan Governor's strategy to stop it,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 16 January 2018.
17 “Umetate kai-iki no ‘Okinawa hamasango’ saiho, Okinawa ken ga kyoka,” Okinawa taimusu, 14 July 2018
18 Abe Mariko and Okubo Nami, “Okinawa-ken Henoko, Oura-wan no kiki kara,” Kagaku, (Tokyo: Iwanami), Makito essei, August 2018.
19 “Futenma hikojo daitai shisetsu kensetsu jigyo ni kakawaru bunsho no hasshutsu ni tsuite,” Governor Onaga to ODB, Press Release, 17 July 2018.
20 Ryuichi Yamashita, “Onaga declares intent to revoke approval for U.S. base work,” Asahi shimbun, 27 July 2018. For full text (in Japanese) of the prefectural announcement and the following press conference by the Governor, see Okinawa taimusu and Ryukyu shimpo of 27 and 28 July.
21 “N-value”is the term for “standard penetration resistance.” See Kitaueda Tsuyoshi, quoted in Doki Naohiko, “Henoko unetate, cho-nanjaku jiban,” Shukan kinyobi, 20 April 2018, p. 6. Also C. Douglas Lummis, “Futenma: 'The most dangerous base in the world,” The Diplomat, 30 March 2018, and (same author) “On a firm foundation of mayonnaise: human and natural threats to the construction of a new base at Henoko,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 May 2018).
22 For some recent Onaga statements of his pro-Security Treaty stance, see Kihara Satoru, “‘Onaga chiji tekkai hyomei’ o kensho suru,” Part 2, “Tekkai' riyu,” 31 July 2018.
23 “Kyo kara dosha tonyu ka, ken, kuni shorui no shinsa shuryo,” Ryukyu shimpo, 28 July 2018.
24 Onaga chiji tekkai hyomei' o kensho suru,“ Part 1, ”‘Dosha tonyu’ to no kankei,“ 30 July 2018.
25 “Henoko tou kenmin tohyo, 6 man 5 sennin no shomei wa omoi,” editorial, Ryukyu shimpo, 25 July 2018, and “Kenmin tohyo motomeru shomei 10 man sen hitsu ni,” Ryukyu shimpo, 30 July, 2018
26 As of mid-2018, 10 of the 11 local governing bodies that make up Okinawa are headed by Tokyo-backed “Team Okinawa” members, with only Naha, the capital, in “All Okinawa” (i.e. allied to Onaga) hands. Ten of the 11 would therefore be almost certain to withhold their cooperation from any referendum.
27 Governor Onaga to Nakajima Koichiro (head of ODB), 31 July 2018.
28 “Henoko tekkai, dosha tonyu go no kanosei, boeikyoku, Okinawa-ken ni chomon no enki yokyu,” Ryukyu shimpo, 4 August 2018.
29 “Okinawa jugon sosho Futenma asesu hyokasho Futenma isetsu mondai, Henoko shin kichi jugon,” Okinawa taimusu, 19 April 2018. See also the several essays by Yoshikawa Hideki, dugong international campaign director, in The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus and Maria Dinzeo, “Jurisdiction debated in Okinawan military base,” Courthouse News, 1 July 2018.
30 Takeshi Onaga, Governor of Okinawa Prefecture, letter to James N. Mattis, Secretary of Defense, “Request for consultation regarding Okinawan dugongs under the US National Historical Preservation Act,” 6 April 2018.
31 Dr Thomas A. Jefferson, “Biological assessment of the Okinawan Dugong: A review of information and annotated bibliography relevant to the Futenma Replacament facility,” quoted here from Judge Chen's ruling, ibid, pp. 5-6 and (the Jefferson email of 2010) p. 34.
32 Okinawa dugong dugong, et al, vs James N. Mattis, et al, US District Court, Northern District of California, 1 August 2018.
33 Tim Shorrock, “Perry: Korean peace would remove rationale for US military in Okinawa,” Lobe Log, 16 March 2018.
34 For sources, see The State of the Japanese State, passim.