OKINAWA's COMPLEX POLITICAL STRUCTURE

Okinawa's political make-up is complicated. As such, in priming the discussion for further development of the respective economic and security-based arguments made in Chapters 3 and 4, this chapter makes the central argument that complex domestic political divisions are likely to become pivotal in relation to Okinawa manifesting itself as a potential flashpoint. More specifically, it details how these divisions intersect with ideology, identity, demographics and geographical location in a form that means each of these variables has a significant effect upon related policies affecting the prefecture and its surrounds as a whole. In order to fully understand their interrelated dynamics, however, we must once again review the historical antecedents of contemporary Okinawan politics, as many core aspects rooted in the past remain pivotal to the present operation of Okinawan local authorities and the larger political structures of which they form a key part.

Formal assimilation, which took the form of a de facto annexation through shobun, or disposition, of the Ryukyu Kingdom by Japan's Meiji rulers, was officially completed in 1879. After this, on the face of it, Okinawa became one of the 47 standardized Japanese prefectures. These are administrative units with highly limited self-autonomy, somewhere between the status of a US state and a British county. This should have meant equal treatment under the Meiji constitution and no more or less self-autonomy than any of the other 46 equivalent local authorities. However, the unique history of the Ryukyu Kingdom, along with mainland Japanese discrimination towards Okinawans, as well as residual Chinese interest and inter-island competition within the prefecture, meant that political wrangling continued up to the point of Japan's entry into the Pacific War. At that time, rapidly deteriorating regional international relations acted to accelerate Tokyo's turn towards militarism, leading to the centralized authorities taking authoritarian control over Okinawa and using the islands as their suteishi, or throwaway stones, with which to defend the Japanese main islands from the impending Allied onslaught.