国際存在としての沖縄と米軍サイト

Abstract

Since 1609, the peoples of Okinawa had not maintained the status of independent state. They had been ruled and infiltrated successively by the domain of Satsuma, the Government of Japan and the US occupation force. However, they had never been totally dissolved into the influence of foreign powers. They had often acted on their political initiative and sometimes raised the international issues. While they have not a sovereign power, they still maintain a power to articulate themselves as an international being throughout modern history. Students on international relations have predisposition to presuppose that sovereign states are the exclusive actors of international relations. But if you focus upon Okinawa or Palestine, the supposition of sovereignty puts you in trouble, because in this framework, you could not find the proper ways how to approach the actions of those supposed to be “none-actors”. Therefore I propose an alternative framework of “international being” to that of sovereign state. “International being” can be defined as follows. ① Proper names; it has more than two place-names such as “Okinawa” and “Ryukyu”. ② Borderline; the territory have indefinable borderlines which divides ambiguously between inside and outside. ③ Freedom of expression; its population may be free culturally and linguistically to express themselves. ④ Lack of impermeability; it has been constantly infiltrated by foreign powers sometimes with the military occupation. ⑤ Forced change of its regimes: foreign powers established its political regimes and they either expanded or contracted its administrative areas. ⑥ Expressive form: whenever it experienced forced changes, it invented the new mode of expression as a political being by which it commanded the recognition of foreign powers. ⑦ Sense of commonality; the sense of commonality among its population was strong enough to survive beyond the successive changes.