The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume | Issue | Article ID 4841 | Dec 31, 1969

1

Revisiting Radical Democracy in (Post) Colonial Okinawa: AnInterview with C. Douglas Lummis

Daniel Broudy, Maki Sunagawa

Maki Sunagawa and Daniel Broudy

Abstract: C. Douglas Lummis, VisitingProfessor at the Graduate School ofIntercultural Communication, OkinawaChristian University, discusses his experiencesin the present resistance movement in Okinawaand how his observations reflect some of thecentral arguments in his book, RadicalDemocracy (Cornell University Press, 1996). Inthis series of interviews, Lummis suggests thatfundamental political changes can and often doemerge through the conditions that peopleconfront as they are drawn through naturalcuriosity to communicate with one another andto f ind out through dialogues what ishappening to society. The conditions thatOkinawa now faces in the anti-base struggleprovide an excellent case study of how radicaldemocracy actually works. Lummis draws uponhis experiences and observations over thedecades in the military occupation of Okinawa,in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, andthe Civil Rights Movement. The interviewfeatures reflections on institutionalized racismand bigotry during the McCarthy Era, analysisof how expressions in public discourserepresenting the "other" reflected a deeplyingrained subconscious hatred or contempt forAfrican Americans and Asians generally; anilluminating synopsis of colonialism and thelure of the free market in the expansion ofcapitalism in Africa and Asia as both historicaland antidemocratic processes, all of whichpoint to the rampant inequality and poverty

across the current world. Rounding out thediscussion is an insightful commentary on thecontradictions inherent in respecting Japan'spacifist constitution while maintaining a strongand expansive military.

1. Free Association and the Emergence ofDemocratic Action

Maki Sunagawa: Thank you for entertainingour questions. It has been nearly two decadessince Radical Democracy came out, and Iwonder in what ways some of your centralarguments might serve to inform, or shape, thedemocratic actions we are seeing in Okinawatoday.

C. Douglas Lummis: I think Okinawa is anexcellent place to observe radical democracy. Itake the Henoko Bus (島ぐるみバス) about

APJ | JF | | 0

2

twice a week, and it is extremely interesting. Ibegan taking it in January 2015, and since it isa tour bus, there's a microphone, and they havedeveloped the custom of passing the mic'around to everybody … it takes an hour and ahalf to get to Henoko and [about that] to getback, which interestingly is about the sametime as a college class, a university class. Theystarted calling the whole operation in the frontof the gate, the whole protest movement,Henoko Sogo Daigaku (Henoko University). Infront of the gate, it is more like a collegelecture class, because a lot of the longtimeactivists come and share their wisdom andunderstanding and their analysis and peoplelisten.

Since activist leaders rarely take the bus, thepassengers are mostly ordinary people, retiredpeople, many of whom are not long-timeactivists themselves. They just started recently,they are ordinary people, so it is more like aseminar. It has been so interesting; forexample, people who take the bus for the firsttime, when handed the microphone sometimesrefuse, or sometimes just say their name, and Icome from this place, and, 'ganbari masho'(Let's overcome this together!); then, they handthe microphone to someone else.

People who started out like that have becomemore and more eloquent. Now on the bus,there is real political discussion. And, this isinteresting because in Okinawa, and in Japantoo, and in many countries, it's very hard tofind a place where you can have a politicaldiscussion. Many people can't do it in theirfamily, can't do it at their job; there are somecollege seminars, but usually the professordominates (depending on the seminar). Youcan't do it at your local area 自治会 (communitycenter) because there are so many differentpolitical opinions and people won't talk politics.But on the bus, here are these ordinary people,

mostly retired, who haven't made a career ofactivism but are talking about the situation.Now, Hannah Arendt wrote in several of herbooks that when a country is going through bigchanges, and nobody knows what's about tohappen, ordinary people will form, what shecalled, 'councils'.

In the American Revolution, there werecommittees of correspondence, in the FrenchRevolution, there were small groups, in theearly Russian Revolut ion there werespontaneous councils that came to be called'Soviets', and in many other countries where inthe process of big changes, this council system,she says, 'springs up naturally', because peoplewant to talk to others about what is going on.This is happening in front of the gate. It isn'tjust protest; it is also a discussion. It iseducation and the formation of a kind of publicwill. Most of the people taking the bus (now),basically didn't know each other, until theystarted taking the bus. Still, usually everyday,there are five or six people taking the bus forthe first time and some regular people taking itonce a week; there is one fellow who takes itsix days a week. But little by little, their will toact together has strengthened so that -especially on the bus - they say, 'they supportthe governor and what he is doing', but theyalso say, 'we are the ones who going to decidethis'. 'We are the ones who have to stop theconstruction of the new base'. 'We will do it'.

And that is an instance of radical democracy.That is a case of, 'we will do it', where thegovernor will do what he can to prevent theconstruction of a new base, but the action weare taking here is creating Okinawan historyourselves. They say, 'We have to win this one,because if don't, Okinawa is lost, and wecannot hand this loss to the next generation, toour children and our grandchildren'. So, theyare not just talking about electing somebody

APJ | JF | | 0

3

who will take the action, they are saying, 'Wewill take the action, and Okinawan history willbe changed by the action we are taking.'

Actually, this goes farther back, becauseGovernor Onaga was made possible and madenecessary by the action of the voters, when hewas Mayor of Naha, and Nakaima was theGovernor. With Nakaima's reelectionapproaching, Onaga explained to Nakaima thatyou cannot win reelection, you can't be electedgovernor on the old conservative slogans. Theelectorate has changed. You have got to say,'the base must go'. You've got to say, 'Futenmabase must leave Okinawa'. Otherwise you won'twin. And Nakaima changed (or pretended tochange), and he won the election. And, thatremains true; no one can win an election inOkinawa anymore unless they say, 'Futenmahas to go.' So, the electorate created, and iscreating now, Governor Onaga, and he knowsthat. He is very well aware of that. In his pressconference yesterday, (I haven't read all of it,just a few little parts), he seemed to be sayingthat he was sort of liberated by the changes inthe electorate, he was able to say things hecouldn't say as a conservative when he first gotelected. Yes, this is radical democracyhappening.

2. Military Occupation, CognitiveDissonance and Awareness of SocialInequities

M.S.: I recently met a 22-year-old U.S. Marinestationed at Camp Schwab, the site of theplanned destruction of the bay for a new base.He admitted that he felt really confused aboutthe way he is seen and treated in Okinawa.Having been raised in Detroit and joining themilitary after dropping out of college, heconcluded that joining represented a kind of

selfless act. All of his family members, he said,were proud of him for leaving his country andserving another. He has been in Okinawa formore than two years, and the way he is treatedhere it seems to him that he is seen as no morethan a criminal. I wonder if you developed anysimilar sense when you were in Okinawa as arepresentative of America just before theVietnam War?

C.D.L.: Of course, I feel sorry for the kid. I alsomet him, and he is a very well-intentionedyoung fellow, a very nice boy. The confusionand the pain that he feels is pretty muchinevitable. I think it is something he simply hasto go through. It isn't just a question of a badattitude on the part of the Okinawans. It is hisdiscovering little by little the situation he hasgotten himself into.

One of the great mysteries of war betweenstates is the way in which it takes perfectlywell-intentioned people, people as well-intentioned as we have a right to expect peopleto be, and puts them into a situation in whichthey carry out, sometimes, truly monstrous andhorrible acts. And in some cases ruins thosepeople if they are in the war long enough. So,yes, this is something that he just has to gothrough.

America teaches its young people thatAmericans will be loved all around the world,and American troops will be and are loved allaround the world, and, this is an illusion. Thereare some people in the world who loveAmerican troops, a lot of people who hatethem, and a lot of people who don't care oneway or another.

APJ | JF | | 0

4

It was one of the great il lusions of theAfghanistan and the Iraq War. The Americanpresident, at the time, George W. Bush and hisSecretary of State, Colin Powell, apparentlytook that myth and made it into policy. That is,if we go into Iraq and get rid of SaddamHussein, the Iraqi people will love us, andthey'll throw away all of their traditionalcustoms and manners, and they'll becomeAmerican democrats. I guess they reallybelieved that, because they had no exit policyand no policy for how to occupy Iraq, and it hasbecome a disaster, that is continuing today.

As for myself, when I was in Okinawa, we weretaught as the young Marines are obviouslytaught now, to stay away from anything thatlooked like a political movement and not talk topeople about such subjects and so on. Iremember learning at the time that there was a'horrible' communist named Senaga Kamijiro,and that we should certainly keep away fromhim.

The feel ing I had was not so much ofcriminality, there was no war going on at thetime, which made it easier to not noticecriminality, but the feeling that disturbed memore and more as the year went by was ofbeing an occupying force, being an occupier,and the difference between life inside the fenceand life outside the fence. The contrast wasreally a violent contrast, much greater thenthan now, because Okinawa at that time wasstill very, very poor. It was like a third-worldcountry. And … alongside the roads were wholetowns of hand-built homes. People built housesout of scraps that they picked up, with justbarely enough room for … a whole house thesize of this office with a whole family living in itwith a kitchen and bed and everything,everything they owned in a space just this big.People were really poor, and the gap, thehuman gap between me (and my friends on the

base) and the people outside was veryuncomfortable.

At first, I didn't notice it, but little by little, overthe year, it came to be the thing I noticed most.I very much didn't want to stay in that kind ofposition as an occupier, or a colonist. The word'colonist' was not in my vocabulary to describeit then, but it is now. But, as someone who wasin a position of structural privilege thatcompletely separates you and these otherpeople and you can't make contact, can't makehealthy human contact - or it's very difficult -because when you think you have, somethingcomes up that shows you that you haven't.

M.S.: Did you talk to other Marine friendsabout this gap?

C.D.L.: A little bit. Not many people understoodwhat I was talking about. In the last monthsthat I was here, I did make a few friendsoutside the bases. The bases in those days,much more than now, were surrounded by abelt of base-related businesses. The base-related business of Koza City was much morehighly developed; 'developed' is not the rightword, but it was a much bigger enterprise thanit is now. The economic gap was huge. So, eventhough our salaries by American standardswere low, if you took a few dollars and went offbase, you were rich. You could buy friendship.You could become friends with people whowanted your money, and I managed in the lastfew months of my stay here to break out, alittle bit. I found a coffee shop. There was ayoung guy who'd started a coffee shop, and hebecame a kind of friend, and through him Imade friends with some University of theRyukyus students, and we had talks thatapproached equality, but nothing could changethe fact that I was an occupying Marine, and

APJ | JF | | 0

5

there was no way that they could see me as notthat, and that was painful. Very uncomfortable.

3. Laws, Flaws, Lies and Other SlipperyAbstractions

M.S.: As you know, at present in Okinawa,many local citizens are wondering about thelaw and what is right and what is wrong andwhy the central government in Tokyo seems tobe using law as a weapon against theenvironment and against the people who wantto protect the environment from furtheraggression conducted in the interest ofbusiness. What I mean by 'law' here is theprocess that the central government workswithin to create the impression that the so-called 'development' of Oura Bay is entirelylegal and that the protestors are interferingwith the business of carrying out the nationalinterest. Governor Onaga recently rescindedthe agreement that his predecessor had workedout with Tokyo (against the will of the localpeople), but Prime Minister Abe continues toframe the Governor and the protestors as law-breakers. Would you comment on why thereseems to be such a clear disconnect inperceptions between the citizens in Okinawaand the powers in Tokyo?

C.D.L.: Yes. Law is a big and confusing issue inthis. You know, one of the things that people onthe bus talk about a lot (and many of thesepeople are not college educated; but theirvocabularies are becoming richer and richer asthe discussion goes on and they exchangeinformation and wisdom and knowledge), is thedestruction of 法の支配 (the rule of law). IsJapan giving up its status as a country of law?They are very well aware that what thegovernment is doing is not legal. They areabsolutely certain that it is not legal. They have

no doubts about that.

I put it this way. Dan, as you well know in yourstudies of propaganda, one of the classic waysof deceiving people is something called the 'biglie'. The 'big lie' was named by Hitler in MeinKampf, who described how the 'big lie' works.His analysis is very sharp. It's very evil but verysharp.

That is, ordinary people can recognize littlelies, because they commit little lies themselves.They know what they are. So, when someone iscommitting a little lie, you can usually seethrough it. There's a certain way that the logicof lying spins itself out, and the voice changes,and the facial expression changes. Hitler didn'tgo as far as to say that. But, he said thatordinary people can usually figure out anordinary lie. But, if you make a lie that is sooutrageous and so huge that people can'tbelieve that anyone would dare to make such alie, they'll think it must be true. No one wouldhave the courage or foolhardiness to make a lieas big as that: 'so, there must be something Idon't know, so it must be true'. If you repeat itover and over and over, people will believe it.Hitler's most famous big lie, of course, was thatGermany lost WWI because of the Jews. It wasa Jewish conspiracy. Of course, there's no basisfor it, but if you just keep saying it, people willthink 'he must know something we don't know'.And, also, it made people feel comfortable.

Well, when Governor Onaga nullified thepermit to reclaim the bay (Oura Bay), it was onthe basis of a committee report that said, 'thepermit given by Nakaima had "flaws" (瑕疵(kashi))'. It is interesting, the word kashi is nota word in most ordinary people's, vocabulary. Ithink a lot of people had to go to the dictionary,and I noticed in the newspaper when they write

APJ | JF | | 0

6

kashi, it is not a Chinese character that isapproved for newspapers, so next to it you'llsee hiragana, rubi. The hiragana tells you howto pronounce kashi. So, when you say kashi, itisn't clear exactly what that is. Seems sort ofabstract. But, what that word is, is the big lie.

The big lie is that you can dump 3.5 milliontruckloads of dirt and garbage into a coralgarden, and it will have no effect on theenvironment.

Now that is as big a lie as you can get.

Anyone with the simplest common sense knowsthat that is crazy, but that is exactly what thepermit is based upon. I'll say it again; 3.5million truckloads of dirt and busted upconcrete and rocks and all kinds of horriblejunk, probably, added into it, and it will have noharmful effect on the environment.

That is the basis of the permit.

So, the government […] has a whole lot ofpseudo-legal bureaucratic techniques foroverturning the Governor's nullification of thepermit, but they can't make that lie into a fact.

Governments can do a lot of things, but theycannot change facts.

They cannot command the dirt that goes intothe Bay not to harm the environment. The dirtwill not obey them. The harm will happen, and

it is illegal to do that - without the Governor'spermit. And, they don't have the Governor'spermit. It is, anyway, a crime against nature todo it with anyone's permit. So, the laws that thegovernment is accusing the demonstrators ofviolating are absolutely trivial compared tothat.

And the people in front of the gate consciouslyviolate certain laws. One of the laws is that it isil legal to attach anything to the fencesurrounding the base. And, they violate thatlaw. Base security people come by withmegaphones and repeat sentences they havememorized, ' this is i l legal . You mustimmediately take it down. Stop putting themup, take them down and take them away withyou.'

And, the people do not stop; they disobey, andthey haven't arrested anybody for doing that -so far.

But, it is a violation of law. At first, people werea bit reluctant to carry out that violation, butmore and more people are willing to do it. They

APJ | JF | | 0

7

tie ribbons; they put up signs; they tie ribbonsin the shape of hearts, and they do all kinds ofthings.

The tent village itself is probably illegal. So,having the sit-in there and putting up the tents- little by little, it has grown up into a smallvillage, now, with a place where people cansleep, with a kitchen where they cook, with aworkshop where they can make new signs, andit even has a WiFi. You can use your computerthere and go online. I'm not sure how theyachieve that. They've got all these gadgets, soit's a little town. The police have not quitegotten up the gumption to sweep them away,although they may do that at some point.

Several times they have been swept away, andthey've rebuilt. They've been swept away bytyphoons, … swept away once by a very viciousand drunken attack by right-wingers whodestroyed a lot of equipment, tore up some ofthe flags and things, but everything has beenrebuilt, and it is stronger now than it was.

Quite likely we will see in the future moreserious violations of the law.

The trucks related to construction generallycome in the early morning between 6:00 and7:00AM. For example, this morning it wasexpected that 500 people would gather thereand they would lie down in front of the trucks,which is illegal, and the riot police would carrythem away. Then, if they can, they would try torun back around and go lie down again, and theriot police would try to prevent them fromdoing that, but the trucks are getting in, andwe might see more civil disobedience, or moreserious civil disobedience in the future.

Civil disobedience means violating the law.That is what disobedience is about. MartinLuther King and Mahatma Gandhi violatedmany laws and were arrested many times. Theywere concerned about much more seriouscrimes being carried out by the other side.

Their disobedience was, of course, always non-violent, it didn't hurt anybody. It hurt a lotpeople's feelings, but it never hurt anybodyphysically. We will probably see more of that.

4. Education, Socialization and the Processof Constructing Assumptions of Superiority

APJ | JF | | 0

8

M.S.: We are educated in school and society tobelieve in the rule of law. I'd like to know alittle bit more about how military members areeducated by their instructors (or by the systemitself). How do they learn about the Battle ofOkinawa, about WWII, about Hiroshima andNagasaki, and about the peace treaty workedout in San Francisco? I wonder whether thesedetails of history form part of the training thatMarines (and other services) receive beforetheir arrival? Was it the case for you in the1950s?

C.D.L.: I got my military education when I wasin my ROTC unit in college from 1954 to '58.Then, I became an officer and had officertraining for some months after going on activeduty, so my military education took place in theMcCarthy days during the years at the heightof the Cold War in the United States. Because Iwas in the Marines and because I was anofficer I had more detailed training thanenlisted men. Another thing that is important isthat there're two levels of education that youget in the military. The second level is whatthey teach that isn't in the training manuals ori n l e c t u r e s , a n d w h a t i s p a s s e d o nunconsciously or semi-consciously, theunderlying assumptions, unspoken, orindirectly spoken nuances of the way peopletalk.

The Marine Corps teaches people about groundwar, not about air war, and so we didn't learnanything (or I can't remember learninganything) about Hiroshima or Nagasaki.Probably the Air Force teaches about that.Most of what I learned about the Battle ofOkinawa was in movies. We saw a lot of thefilms taken by the U.S. military. I canremember many times seeing the movies of theflame tanks pouring fire into the caves wherepeople were hiding. Several, very, striking andhorrible films showing that, I can remember

seeing those over and over.

The unconscious, unspoken message that camethrough about the Battle of Okinawa was that itwas a great victory, and Okinawa was taken atgreat sacrifice, and to the Marine Corps andArmy the unspoken conclusion, therefore, wasthat it belongs to us.

It belongs to us through the right of conquest.It is ours. We took it. The ancient law of war,you take a place by force, and you own it. Youcan do with it what you want - that is the 'spoilsof war'. It was taught to us that Okinawabelonged to the Marines and to the U.S.military under the rule of 'spoils of war'. Wetook it at great sacrifice according to one of themost ancient laws of humankind. When youtake something in that way, it belongs to you,and I believe that that unconscious notion stillexists in the Marines.

We took it. We won. They lost. Too bad forthem. The U.S. military took it in WWII andthen kept it. In other words, there were severaldecades when the U.S. military was theOkinawa Government. There is no place inGermany or Italy that the U.S. took and kept inthat particular way. People talk about theinfluence of the U.S. military on Okinawa, butthere is also the influence of Okinawa on theMarines. Okinawa is a big part of Marine Corpsculture.

A few words of Uchina-guchi (Okinawanindigenous language) or Nihongo (Japaneselanguage) have become Marine Corps slang. Alot of Marines know ' joto' (good) and'akisamiyo' (Oh my God!). The word 'honcho'(big boss) roughly comes from the Japanese

APJ | JF | | 0

9

hancho (leader of the group), leader of a han(group). And, a lot of Marines say, 'Oh, that'snumber one', ichiban-a sort of pidgin fromJapanese to Pidgin English to 'number one'.There are a lot of things like that. There was alot of talk about Okinawa and how special aplace it was that I heard in the two years whileI was stationed in the U.S. As I said, that wasduring the McCarthy days. Senator JosephMcCarthy led a kind of hate speech campaignagainst communists, or imagined communists.There was a huge national fear, a panic aboutcommunists by this rather crazy alcoholicsenator …

C.D.L.: The Marine Corps was, I believe, thelast of the U.S. military units to integrateracially, the last to accept black enlisted. WhenI was in officers training, I remember only oneblack person being trained to be an officer.Now a lot of that has changed, but to give youtwo good examples of the racism at that time …I remember in the officers school in Quantico,Virginia, … a captain giving a lecture on how tocamouflage your vehicle using branches frombushes, and he said that it is very important notto turn them upside down because the color ofthe bottom of the leaf is different from the colorof the top, and if you make the mistake ofturning them upside down, 'Joe Gook' up on thehill will look down and say, 'ah so' ('I see' inJapanese).

So, 'Joe Gook' was the theoretical enemy, buthe spoke Japanese. He would say, 'ah so', andthis (sort of racism) was completelyunconscious. In other words, the Marine Corpshad fought against Japan during WWII then inKorea, and so their ingrained image of theenemy was Asians. So, the Koreans were'gooks', the Japanese were 'gooks', the Chinesewere 'gooks', and the Okinawans were 'gooks'.They didn't know about the existence of theVietnamese, but when the Vietnamese War

began, of course they were 'gooks', so it meansany Asian.

And, I also remember in the officers' mess, atCamp Pendleton, there was a huge amateurishmural on the wall, and it showed an orientalcity and a Marine riding in a jinrikisha (人力車), which in those years had disappeared fromJapan and existed, to my knowledge, maybeonly in Hong Kong. And the Marine is sittingluxuriously with a cigar between his fingersand looking like he is king of the world, andthere is this big Asian man pulling thejinrikisha. He has a Chinese pigtail, a queue(辮子) braided, and he is wearing geta (下駄)(Japanese wooden clogs), which Chinese peoplenever do.

So, he is 'Joe Gook'; he's 'gook' - just Chinese,Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, whatever.Nobody ever talked about that, but it was juston the wall. Somebody painted it that way andeverybody looked at it. Nobody said, 'that'shorrible; paint it out'. It was just there. And so,we left Camp Pendleton and came to Okinawa,and we assumed that we were going to thatcountry. Could be Tokyo or Naha.

D.B.: I've wondered about 'gook' myself. When Iwas studying Korean, it dawned on me thatwhen the Americans were in Vietnam, theypossibly imported 'gook' into Vietnam fromtheir experiences in the Korean War, because'gook' means nation. Likely, the Koreans simplyadopted the Chinese conception of America,expressed in the characters beautiful andnation.

C.D.L.: Quite likely, because I don't think it wasused in WWII. The racist term was, 'Jap' or

APJ | JF | | 0

10

'Nip'. I don't remember hearing 'gook' until theKorean War.

D.B.: You have been writing and talking aboutissues in East Asia for more than a few decadesnow. I wonder if your interest in this regionbegan taking hold when you served in the U.S.military before Vietnam, or did it begin in someother way?

C.D.L. : I am not sure about the word'fascination', but I am pretty sure that if theMarines hadn't sent me to Okinawa, I wouldn'tbe living here now, or I wouldn't have lived allthose years in Japan. When my three yearswere up - and as I said earlier I felt verystrange about living in Asia but always being in'America' except for occasional forays out andcoming back and learning virtually nothingabout where I was - I determined not to wastethe opportunity. I thought, I will get dischargedhere and study about it awhile, so I startedlearning Japanese while I was still on the base,reading a book. I didn't get very far. Then, Itold them I would take my discharge, abandonmy right to be taken by ship back to San Diego,and I got a passport and a visa, and took a boatto Kansai. I had a friend who had been living inNara, an Austrian who had been at theUniversity of California while I was there, andwe were on the ski team together, and webecame friends. And he was living in Nara in ahouse where there was a vacant room that Icould rent, and it seemed like a greatadventure.

It felt so nice to shift from Marine Corps life tosomething that felt like semi-Bohemian, genteelpoverty life. I enrolled in the Japanese languageschool that existed inside Osaka ForeignLanguage University, so I would commute fromNara on the Kentetsu Train and take Japanese

lessons and then come back in the evening. Ihad that year and the next year, living inKansai, a kind of fascination that manyforeigners go through in Japan, the exoticism,exotic Nara and exotic Kyoto. So, I did all thosetypical things of traveling and visiting theshrines and temples and art galleries, seeing alot of Noh plays and thinking it was all veryartistic. After two years, I re-entered theUniversity of California Graduate School anddecided to major not in Asian Studies (took thatas a minor, mostly because I'd been there andcould use the language a little bit), but studiespolitical theory. As it happened, two professorsin the Department of Political Science whospecialized in Asian Studies were RobertScalapino and Chalmers Johnson.

I enrolled in Robert Scalapino's seminar thefirst year I was there, for a semester, and Idiscovered that the atmosphere was verysimilar in a strange way to what I hated aboutbeing in the Marines. They were not militarypeople, although Scalapino had learned hisJapanese language as an occupation militaryman. The first-generation post-war Japanscholars, pretty much all learned their Japanesein Monterey in the Army Language School andthen participated in the occupation. Scalapinowas one of them. The students were notnecessarily military people, but when theytalked about Japan, they talked as colonials.They were looking at this thing, down there(points) called Japan and analyzing it andtalking about how strange this custom is andhow funny that is, and how can we get thatchanged, how we can use it to the advantage ofthe United States. Very, very contemptuous,looking down on it (Japan) from a high place.

And, then, there was Chalmers Johnson, nowvery popular among antiwar people. But thiswas the time that, as he later confessed, he wasworking for the CIA, and he was, as he

APJ | JF | | 0

11

admitted in Blowback and The Sorrows ofEmpire, very angry toward, antiwar students.That is, he was, rather, in a rage against anti-Vietnam War students. Contemptuous, andgiven that I was one of them I never enrolled inany of his classes.

So, the two of them prevented me frombecoming a Japan specialist. I am not now andnever have been a Japan scholar. 'Fascination'was no longer the word. For very complicatedfamily reasons. Since then, when I have writtenand studied about Japan, it is just because Iended up living in Japan. You have to beconcerned about where you are living.

5. Radical Democracy vs. ManufacturingConsent for Elite Concepts of Free MarketDevelopment

D.B.: Yes, and what you're saying reminds meof a chapter in Radical Democracy where youseem to suggest that in the West we arehabituated through the lessons of history tobel ieve that development equates todemocracy, yet you go on to make a goodcounterintuitive case for seeing economicdevelopment as anti-democratic. Sincepublication of the book in the 1990s, I wonderi f you have observed any s igni f icantstrengthening of democracy and/or any movestoward greater freedoms for workers orcitizens in so-called democratic societies? Inother words, has democracy become moreradical?

C.D.L: In one sense radical democracy is astate of society that can pop-up in almost anysystem. People gather with a common concernabout something and when they realize that

there are enough of them to make a difference,they begin to act. This can happen anywhere,and the possibility hasn't gone away. But inanother sense, if you think of freedom forworkers, economic development left to itselfproduces a huge gap between the rich and thepoor. Economic development taking place in agenuine free market means also a free labormarket, and in a free labor market, as Marxpointed out, the rich get richer, and the poorget poorer.

The way to rescue some piece of democracy inthat situation was to form strong unions andstrike for higher wages, strike for betterworking conditions, strike for better control ofthe workplace. This is a form of radicaldemocratic action. It was a way of changing thesituation, and when the unions were strong, theworkers in those unions were in a betterposition. They could make demands of theiremployers and have their demands met. I amnot talking about one-hour strikes or one-daystrikes. I am talking about strikes that arecarried out day after day, week after week untilthe employer hurts, and when they start toreally hurt, maybe they're going to gobankrupt, they allow higher wages.

Well, in the U.S. and Japan and many parts ofthe world, in recent decades the unionmovement has been very much weakened. InJapan, there are hardly any unions that aren't'yellow unions', that is, unions basicallyorganized to cooperate with the managers.There is hardly ever a strike that lasts even afull day, so it becomes ritualized. This is a greatsadness. This was a way that some degree ofdemocracy was recovered in the world of wagelabor. It is not just a question of getting enoughmoney to live.

APJ | JF | | 0

12

There're different ways of defining what'poverty' means. There is absolute povertywhere people don't get enough to eat, don't getclothes enough to keep them warm in thewinter, don't get enough medicine to stayhealthy. But, there is another kind of povertythat simply means a gap between the workersand the people over them. In other words,there is the word 'rich', when you talk aboutthe rich and the poor. What 'rich' means, if youlook up 'rich' in the Oxford English Dictionary…, its original meaning was 'power' - not'money'. It was the kind of power that a kingwielded over his subjects. The word 'reich'grows out of it. It is the kind of power a kinghas, and the kind of power a king has is createdby a group of people who, when the king givesorders, they obey them. If somebody stands upand says, 'hey everyone, I'm 'king,' andeverybody else says, 'so am I', there is noadvantage to being a king, because the other'kings' won't do what you tell them to.

So, originally power is not money, it is peoplewho obey. And little by little the word 'rich'came to mean 'being in a position to forcepeople to obey by using money'.

So, you can make a person rich either by givinghim more money, or by arranging to have thesepeople have less money. The thing is, there hasto be a gap, so that these people can't liveproperly unless they do what this person says.If this person says, 'I won't give you any of mymoney unless you work in my factory or on myplantation', then that's what they must do.

In that sense, the world completely organizedaround wage labor is organized aroundinequality. It is a system in which it is built-inthat if you don't plug-in to the wage laboreconomy in one way or another, you don't eat.

And, that is not a situation of freedom.

When the Industrial Revolution began to spreadoutside Europe and America and into Asia andAfrica, … many of the people, in the villagesand towns of those countries, for example inSouth Asia, were simply not interested inparticipating in this form of economy.

The colonist would say, 'Look, if you work forme, I'll give you money'.

And the native people would reply, 'What'sthat, what's it good for? We don't have a moneyeconomy; everything we need we can get fromthe forest, or from the river, or from the sea.Sometimes we trade with shells, a little bit. Butthis money won't do us any good'.

So, then imagine the Europeans setting up alittle store, coming in as traders, and saying,'look at all this good stuff we brought over herefrom California or from Paris. If you hadmoney, you could buy it'.

So, one pattern was that somebody would look,and he'd say, 'Oh, I'd love to have that knife,because that's made of steel. How much is it?'

'Oh, it's a dollar'. 'If you come to my house, I'llpay you a dollar a week to work in the kitchen.'

So, the person works in the kitchen for a week,gets a dollar, buys the knife, and quits the job.

APJ | JF | | 0

13

The colonizer would say, 'why did you quit'?

'I got the knife', the employee would reply, and'That's all I wanted'.

That kind of thing really happened. It's calledthe backward bending supply curve of labor. …You raise the wages and people, once they getthe wages they needed to buy the one or twothings they wanted, quit the job.

Very few people in those cultures had a customof working eight, ten, twelve hours per day. So,it is a fact that is pretty much unknown by mostpeople who write about the history of economicdevelopment that in country after country aftercountry the only way the Europeans and theAmericans could get people to work wasthrough forced labor. Forced labor is justanother name for enslavement. Forced labor istemporary enslavement - enslavement until theproject is done.

The original infrastructure in most of thecolonies - the harbors, the buildings for theEuropeans to live in, the factories, the roads,the railroads, were built by forced labor. And,there were two kinds.

One was forced labor, not with rifles andbulldozers (they didn't have bulldozers then),but it was at the point of a sword or a gun. I'veseen pictures of railroad workers in Africachained together by the necks and shackled bythe feet. Of course, a whole lot of people died.In the Caribbean islands, the native peoplebecame extinct, which is why most people in

the Caribbean are descendants of African, ormixed African and colonists. There are very,very few who claim Taíno ancestry, the nativepeoples who were there when Columbusarrived. And there was that kind of forced laborfor the first generation of workers.

Then, there was another kind, called indirectforced labor. That is, you come into a countrywhere there is a hunting-and-gatheringeconomy, where people go into the forest andinto the sea to get what they want, where theycan get everything they want - food, medicine,building materials, materials to make theirclothing with, materials for jewelry, out of theforest or out of the sea-you can cut down theforest and replace it with a plantation, plantrubber, or coffee, or sugar cane. Then if peoplestill want to live in the same area, the only waythey can live is by working on the plantationbecause their means of subsistence hasdisappeared. This was described by people atthe time as 'indirect forced labor'. Re-arrangingthe world in such a way that if you don't enterthis economy, you can't live. Well, we live inthat world now; it is our world.

Every college student, unless their parents arerich landowners, has to think, when I graduate,can I get a job?

And if I have unusual political opinions orcriticize those in power too much, maybe I can'tget a job, so I'd better be careful about what Isay. That is a true in countries that we calldemocracies, but it is a huge anti-democraticfactor. It is so built-in that it is awfully hard toanswer the question: 'Well, what are you goingto do about it'?

APJ | JF | | 0

14

For many years, people had the dream thatsomething called socialism would solve theproblem, but so far, that option has been prettydisappointing, at least in most of the countriesthat have tried it.

It is very difficult to come up with a plan thatwould solve this problem, but it doesn't mean itisn't a problem. It means it is something weshould all think about.

6. The Exercise of Free Speech in theDevelopment of Radical Democracy

M.S.: To shift from a global view to a local one,how do you see the attitudes of Okinawanpeople expressed toward both Tokyo andWashington, and to the US-Japan SecurityTreaty?

C.D.L.: First, concerning the theoretical claimthat democracy is a condition rather than beinga system. I sometimes use the world 'condition'and sometimes 'state'; the image is of a changeof state. The image everybody is familiar with isof ice becoming water, and water becomingsteam. It's all H2O, but it behaves in acompletely different way. When people, orsome big part of the people, shift from beingobedient subjects following the rules, andfollowing the routines, and doing everything asexpected, and instead gather and talk to eachother and realize that by gathering they havepower, then they begin to talk about whetherand how to change the system of laws andrules, daily routines and habits. That's a changeof state. That is what I call 'radical democracy'.

My personal experience that drove the image

into my head was, when I was at the Universityof California in graduate school in 1964, therewas a movement that was called 'the freespeech movement'. The university took it uponitself to close down a little area of campuswhere people were allowed to do politicalorganizing. This was the time of the civil rightsmovement. There were civil rights organizers,there were antiwar organizers, and there werealso young conservative organizers all usingthis little space, and the university shut it downand said 'you can't do that anymore'. And thefree speech movement began.

A fellow named Jack Weinberg carried a cardtable right to the middle of the plaza in front ofthe administration building and put it down,and began passing out leaflets for the civilrights movement. A police car drove onto thecampus and they arrested him, and put him inthe police car. It happened to be about 11:55 inthe morning. And at 12:00 o'clock, there was ascheduled rally about free speech. It justhappened that all these people were coming tothe rally, and they saw Jack Weinberg in thepolice car about to be taken away. Many ofthem had been to the south the summer beforeparticipating in and supporting the StudentNon-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)and civil rights work, and they had learnedabout something called the 'sit-in'. Sosomebody shouted, "Sit-in!" Everyone there satdown around the police car. And the police carcouldn't move.

And then, the brilliant young philosophyundergraduate named Mario Savio, who was tochair the rally, arrived. People were asking,"What will we do about the rally?" And he said,"We' l l have i t here." And he took themicrophone and climbed on top of the policecar, and began talking. This was in the earlydays of the student movement. It was not thepolice's mode of operation to mishandle college

APJ | JF | | 0

15

students. In a few years, this never would havehappened but this time, they did not attempt toforce the police car out of there. The police carwas there eventually for, I think, two days orso, and more people were sitting down. Thenumber of people sitting down grew. The rallywent on twenty-four hours a day. The speakingwent on. Sometimes people were sleeping. Iwent home and got my sleeping bag, and …spent the night there.

It was students versus the university, okay?Students protesting against the university. Andat some point, you look around and there wereabout 5,000 students sitting there. And, soon,we asked, 'what do we mean, students versusthe university? This is a big piece of theuniversity'. 5,000 students – without studentsthere is no university. Students are notoutsiders to it; they are an essential element ofit. Otherwise, it's a research association whereprofessors talk to each other. It's a universitybecause there are students. If they throw out5,000 students, they are cutting off their arm.So, at some point, people in the protestbecame, not the whole university, but a bigenough part of it that the university couldn'tignore them. First, the authorities said, 'Wewon't negotiate'. Later, they negotiated, andJack Weinberg went free.

A lot of other things happened after that, butnow the University of California has freespeech on campus. It changed. But it was sointeresting to sit in that group of 5,000 people,people around you whom you'd never met.Food was being passed around and everybodywas f r i end ly , and i f you look a t thephotographs, you'll notice the faces of theprotesters and the faces of their opponents arecompletely different.

The opponents have, sort of, cynical grins. Youcan pick them out from the crowd, the peoplewho wanted to use hate speech against us. Forthose few days, there was something like a newform, a different form of society, presaging adifferent way of people relating to each other.And, it was such a powerful experience that alot of people who participated could never quitego back, could never quite forget that. We werechanged by that experience.

I think the same thing happened in thePhilippines during the anti-Marcos movementof 1983-86, and in Poland on a far larger scaleduring the Solidarity Movement of the 1980s.When this change of state takes place, it's notjust that it is effective and you get what youwant, but it itself is a different way of being, adifferent way in which humans relate to eachother. That is exhilarating.

There is a little bit of that on the bus that I wasdescribing before - not quite as powerfulbecause it's not twenty-four hours a day. Butthe resistance in Henoko has lasted a lot longerthan the free speech movement did, indeed ithas continued for twenty years. Little by little,people on the bus see themselves differentlyfrom the way they had seen themselves earlier.Most of these people are, as I said, retirees.What would they be doing if they were nottaking this bus? The message in the song [theysing] is, 'If you sit at home all day watching TV,not doing much and not singing songs and notdancing, you will become senile very early. Butif you participate in Henoko University, you willnot get senile.' In other words, it's a way ofjoking about their being old. Maybe you arebald, maybe you have false teeth, maybe yourlegs aren't so strong, but you can still sit. So,you can sit-in. You can also engage in politicaldebate. Partly, what they are doing isinstrumental. It has an effect, and that'sexciting. But partly, it's a way of becoming a

APJ | JF | | 0

16

different sort of being. You don't usually thinkof retired people as a political force.

By the way, this same Jack Weinberg, from thetop of the police car, coined a slogan thatbecame a slogan for the '60s, "Don't trustanybody over 30." He was the one who coinedthat saying for the youth movement. I heardhim say that. Now, I've been saying to thepeople on the bus, 'now we've got our ownslogan, "Don't trust anyone under 60."'

Retired people can form a political class. InOkinawa, they are the people who rememberthe war, bear that burden, bear that memory,or at least, they are familiar with the horriblesituation right after the war when they werechildren. For many of them, this is their bestand last opportunity to transform that memoryinto something positive and concrete. They arenot going to give up easily. They are ready tocome everyday.

To move to the second half of the questionabout attitudes of Okinawan people towardTokyo and Washington, especially the attitudetoward Tokyo has, I think, changed ininteresting ways. I've been here 15 years.When I first got here in the year 2000, thepolitical map of Okinawa was that there wereprogressives who opposed all bases anywherein Japan and opposed the Japan-US securitytreaty, and there were conservatives, many ofwhom were not positively enthusiastic aboutthe bases but thought there was nothing thatcould be done about them and that it was awaste of time trying to get rid of them, so thebest thing to do is use them to our advantage,get money from Tokyo and build nice buildingsfor people, parks and so on. There was thatkind of political spectrum.

In the year 2000, there was also a very smallgroup of people who, instead of holding that allbases should be removed from Japan and thesecurity treaty should be abolished, begansaying, 'Futenma Base should be moved to themainland'. They were very, very unpopular.They were breaking a taboo. You weren'tsupposed to say that. They took lots of abuse,mostly from mainlanders and other Okinawanactivists for saying such a thing, becauseOkinawan people were supposed to act insolidarity with brothers and sisters in mainlandJapan.

Local activists shouldn't say anything thatwould anger mainland activists, or troublethem. They should continue to say, 'abolish theUS-Japan Security Treaty, that's the onlysolution'.

As I said earlier, at the time of Nakaima's re-election bid in 2010, Mayor Onaga told him,'The only way you can win this election is tosay, "Futenma base should be moved to themainland".' It turned out he was right. Nakaimatook the advice and won the election.

What that means is the consciousness ofordinary voters was a little different from theconsciousness of most progressive leaders whofelt indebted to the Japanese movement for thereversion of Okinawa to Japanese rule. Many ofthe progressive leaders had been active in thereversion movement of 1972, which ended U.S.direct rule and returned administrativeauthority over Okinawa to Japan. Progressiveleaders were concerned about alienating theirmainland allies who were opposed to buildingbases on the mainland. Ordinary voters don'thave allies in the mainland that they are afraid

APJ | JF | | 0

17

of insulting, and they felt more resentmenttoward the mainland for imposing the bases onOkinawa.

The slogan, 'Futenma Base should go to themainland' is also a way of expressingdissatisfaction and anger with Japanesetreatment of Okinawa. It's not simply apractical solution. It's also an expression ofdiscontent, a way of pointing your finger at theJapanese and say ing , ' Th i s i s yourresponsibility'. So, little by little, moreprogressive leaders have been persuaded bythe slogan, although many still are not. Theprogressive camp is still divided. But theslogan, in Japanese Kengai Isetsu (県外移設),which in Okinawa means, 'move Futenma baseto the mainland', is what made the 'AllOkinawa' (オール沖縄) movement of 2015possible. This is because one section of theconservative camp had always been unhappywith the unequal burden of the bases andunhappy with the discriminatory way they aretreated by Japanese, but they had no way ofexpressing it.

They were not ready to say the 'Japan-USsecurity should be entirely abrogated'. But, itwas and is possible for them to say, 'This isunequal treatment. It's discrimination'. It is aswounding to a conservative as anyone to bediscriminated against. They are human beings,and they can become as angry as anyone aboutsuch treatment. It isn't the replacement of ananti-war movement by an anti-colonialmovement. But, the anti-war movement isexpanding to include an anti-colonialsentiment. This is a huge change that is stillgoing on.

On Monday, (November 30, 2015), I took thebus to Henoko, and at the gate and on the bus

on the way back, there was a furious debate onthe question of Kengai Isetsu (moving Futenmabase to the mainland. It was very lively, with alot of anger. Anger is inevitable because it'svery painful for people to shift from the presentcircumstances, a quite impossible dream ofabrogating the Japan-US security treaty andaccept as their immediate slogan moving atleast one base to Japan.

But one by one, people who were advocatingthe former are shifting to the latter. Forordinary voters, it makes perfect sense - 'ofcourse the base should be moved to mainlandJapan. It's their treaty. Okinawa never enteredinto any treaty like the Japan-US SecurityTreaty.'

When you point this out, some people say, 'Nowthat you mention it, that's true'. That is, theword 'Okinawa' nowhere appears in the US-Japan Security Treaty. Many people in Japanvaguely seem to think that the US-JapanSecurity Treaty means that U.S. bases shouldbe in Okinawa. But that is not what's writtenthere. It says they can be put in Japan. Rightnow, according to the most recent opinion poll,86% of the Japanese people say they supportthe Security Treaty, and only 2% say it shouldbe abrogated, and 75% answer 'yes' to thequestion, 'Should U.S. bases be placed inOkinawa'? What this means is that people don'tunderstand that supporting, or not opposing,the Japan-US Security Treaty means approvingthe possibility of a U.S. base next to yourhouse. That's what it means.

Hopefully, when people start to understandthat, though, they'll rethink their support forthe Security Treaty. The U.S. Consul General inOkinawa got on the front page recently bysaying, 'Oh yes, Okinawan public opinion about

APJ | JF | | 0

18

Henoko is very, very, very important, butcompared to the Japan-U.S. alliance, it's very,very, very small." He was trying to please bothsides, but aside from this failed attempt atbeing diplomatic, it's also incorrect becauseright now, Okinawan public opinion is agigantic issue in the Japan-US alliance. It hasthe potential to shake that alliance down to theroots. One of the reasons Japanese people havebeen quieter year by year about the Japan-U.S.Security Treaty is, 'After all, the bases go toOkinawa.' Okinawa has played the role ofallowing those bases … so Japanese people can,on one hand, imagine that they might behonored with the Nobel Peace Prize for beingso pacifist (Article 9 of the Constitution) and, atthe same time, be protected by U.S. bases inOkinawa.

Because of that way of thinking that I did not,and do not, support, some Japanese supportersof Article 9 propose awarding the Nobel Peacefor Japanese supporters of Article 9. Most ofthe supporters of Article 9 also support theSecurity Treaty - so long as the bases are inOkinawa. Now Okinawans are saying, "We aretired of being the factor that allows you todeceive yourself. If you support the Japan-USSecurity Treaty, then you get the bases.'

So, it is not a small thing at all. It's huge. Thediplomats who are smarter than the presentconsul general have said as much: that theOkinawan problem has the potential toendanger the Japan-US alliance. The consulgeneral should study a little bit.

M.S.: Do you think the current social andpolitical conditions you are observing duringfrequent trips to Henoko are ripe for creating agreater or stronger democracy in which well-informed citizens can transform the situation? I

ask this in light of some of the propaganda Ihave studied, which is obviously attempting tosell local people on central governmentconcepts of "development," which seem todestroy any sense of informed consent.

C.D.L.: At the main gate of Schwab, there aregenerally experienced political activists whoconsciously, or unconsciously, frame or controlthe things that are talked about and set thetone. The bus passengers, though, areinexperienced people, mostly, and so there is apolitical discussion among ordinary people, andmany of them are participating in any politicalmovement for the first time, but little by littleover the weeks and months, the discussiondeepens and becomes enriched, partly becausepeople exchange ideas collectively. They havelots of information among them, and theyexchange it and learn from each other, andtheir debate skills gradually improve as theylisten to others speaking and talk themselves.So, it becomes very rich. And it is also the kindof experience people call 'empowerment'. Thepeople gain confidence. All this means that itapproaches a condition called 'radicaldemocracy'. So, as people talk and learn andimprove their skills, they gain confidence andtheir manner of speaking changes little bylittle. At the beginning, it largely took the formof

"We will support the Governor. We are trying tohelp the Governor do what he wants to do. Wedemand that the government do something …"

But increasingly, you hear people saying

"Well, the Governor will take this, that, or someother action, but we are the ones who have to

APJ | JF | | 0

19

prevent the construction. We have to do it. Weare going to do it. We can do it."

So, instead of hoping that somebody else willchange the course of history, or, build thecourse of history, they see themselves as 'theactor' who will do this.

"We will stop the construction. We can do it.Not individually, but collectively."

It is a very interesting change. So, this is theway in which movements begin perhaps as acomplaint, or a protest, and gradually becomeempowered and approach the situation ofdemocratic action with people doing it ratherthan asking someone else to do it.

6. Rightwing Mythologies, Ignorance andthe Communist Scapegoat

M.S.: Perhaps you have heard recently that theLDP has been paying party members whobelong to the Net Supporters Club (自民党ネットサポーターズクラブ) to assault the newmedia landscape with messages thatcontradict, sharply criticize, or attack adhominem any citizens who oppose Mr. Abe'splans. Many people involved in the struggleagainst LDP policies, such as in the secret TPP(Trans-Pacific Partnership) negotiations, the so-called Secrecy Law, re-interpretations ofArticle 9, the ongoing Fukushima nuclearmeltdown issue, and Henoko, are evidently puton 'blacklists' and monitored by the centralgovernment. Have you seen any other examplesof information manipulation on this scale?

C.D.L.: I'm not sure if I can give a verysatisfactory answer to that question. I have noevidence of, for example, the hate speechcrowd being paid by the Liberal DemocraticParty. It wouldn't surprise me. It seems, giventhe nature of the Liberal Democratic Party,quite natural, unsurprising if they do that. But Ihave no evidence. I haven't encounteredsomebody who looks like a spy or a paidprovocateur.

If I were organizing something like that for theLiberal Democratic Party, I would try and findpeople more intelligent and more informedthan the people who are actually driving byshouting invectives at the demonstrators. Theright-wing crowd who come by and sometimespersonally harass the demonstrators, orsometimes drive by in cars and shout things,sometimes say, 'We hope you are enjoyingthose lunches that are paid for by China!' Buteverybody knows that they paid out of theirpockets, so it's just silly. And they say, 'Oh,you're getting 10,000 yen, 20,000 yen everyday to come to the demonstrations'. Buteverybody knows that they are not getting that.So, it's counterproductive for them to shout likethat because it just reveals how little they knowabout what's going on. Surely, if the LiberalDemocratic Party is hiring those people, Iwould advise them to make them study a littlemore about what they are doing.

C.D.L: The first time I encountered this newgeneration of hate speech people was when the'All Okinawa' (オール沖縄) group, led by thenMayor Onaga, went to Tokyo carrying apetition to give to the government. It had threedemands: (1) close down Futenma Base; (2) donot move the base to Henoko or anywhere elsein the prefecture; (3) and no Osprey flyingmachines in Okinawa.

APJ | JF | | 0

20

In addition to handing this petition over to thegovernment, they had a rally in the outdooramphitheater in Hibiya Park (日比谷野外音楽堂)in downtown Tokyo, and a demonstration in theGinza on Sunday on January 27, 2013. Ihappened to be in Tokyo at the time, so Iparticipated in both. The rally was veryinteresting. Over the years, I have participatedin political rallies in that theater, and therewere always progressive types, labor unionpeople, workers on that stage. And, hardlyanybody was in a dark suit and a necktie. Butat th is ra l ly were the heads of everygovernment unit in Okinawa except theGovernor. The Mayor of Naha, the Mayor ofevery city that has a Mayor, the heads of everytown, ward, and village in Okinawa, plusmembers of the National Diet (Parliament). So,here is this row of dark suits, and neckties,establishment-looking people, defying theconservative party, the LDP, including manywho would later be expelled from the party. So,this was Okinawa's political establishment atthe time - the heads of every political unit.

It was very interesting to see them on thestage, protesting. Then, we went out for thedemonstration, and there were the hate speechpeople lining the streets on both sides forhundreds of yards, a very large number ofthem. This was the first time I saw this newbreed of radical conservatives. They didn't lookthe same as the conservatives I had knownbefore. They didn't look like gangsters, the waymany of the conservatives look like yakuza.Many of the old generation of conservativesare, in fact , yakuza. That was ratherdisconcerting. They looked like middle-classworking people, lots of women wearingordinary clothes, not right-wing uniforms, andflying dozens and dozens of hinomaru (日の丸)flags, their faces twisted with hate. They werenot just professionals spouting a right-wingline. They were really feeling hate. They werehating. When you shout hate, your face gets

quite ugly. They were ordinary people, whoordinarily looked nice, but, in the act of thishating, they were making themselves very ugly.

And they revealed that they didn't know whatthey were talking about because they weresaying two things. One, they were saying,

"You are pawns of China; go back to China; youare being used by China; the Chinese will be sohappy to see you demonstrating here."

They hadn't studied enough to realize that theslogan of the All Okinawa Movement was 'theFutenma Base should be moved to themainland', out of Okinawa, Kengai Isetsu (県外移設). That was the chief slogan. If that everhappened, it would likely be moved to Kyushu,which is closer to Beijing than any place inOkinawa. Moving the base nearer to bothBeijing and Pyongyang; there is no reason thatChina would welcome that; China would gainno military advantage if the base moved fromone place to another within Japan. The wholeChina thing is based on misinformation.

Now, many of the people marching wouldsupport all of the bases moving out of Okinawa,and some of them are even opposed to theJapan-US Security Treaty, but the slogan of theAll Okinawa (オール沖縄) Movement is not that.It is: this one base (Futenma) should be movedto the mainland.

And the other thing they were shouting was, '日本から出て行け' (get out of Japan!). This alsomeans that they were not thinking about whothey were talking to. This is a slogan that wouldmake sense in an ugly way if they shouted it at

APJ | JF | | 0

21

Koreans, or if they shouted at me. But, this wasa demonstration led by the entire Okinawanpolitical establishment, Okinawans who areJapanese citizens and political leaders, walkingat the head of the column in their dark suits,white shirts and neckties, many of whom hadnever been in a demonstration before. This wasthe first demonstration in their lives, and theywere coming to Tokyo, the capital of Japan, tomake an appeal to the Japanese people andwhat they hear is 'get out of Japan!'

To say that to you or me is different fromsaying that to Okinawans as a whole, and Isuppose many of these politicians fromOkinawa thought,

"Yes, okay, that's an idea; maybe we shouldthink about that."

In the past few years, thoughts about Okinawaindependence have developed and moved fromthe periphery to becoming one of themainstream subjects of discussion. Okinawa isve ry f a r f r om hav ing any power fu lindependence movement, but the talk ofindependence is no longer ridiculed, as it was afew years ago. So, again these people, whenthey think about what to shout at the Okinawaanti-new-base movement, they should study alittle more about what that movement is aboutif they want to be effective. That is my advice tothem.

D.B.: It seems as though the neo-nationalistswho drive by in Henoko and spew hate speechat the protest obviously … have reduced theworld to black and white terms. I waswondering if you have noticed anything aboutthe discourse or the actions within the

movement that counter this over-simplification.

C.D.L.: It is very tempting, especially for themales (including myself), to want to shout back.When you are shouted at with hate speech,anger boils up and you think of some answer toit and many people there have been guilty attimes of shouting back and calling them namesin revenge. Of course, that is falling into thetrap; that is playing the role that they want youto play. It takes some effort to ignore them,turn our backs on them, remain silent, don'tlook at them. The very best day that I haveseen, the best manner I have seen inresponding to these hate-speech people,happened on a Friday. In Henoko every Fridayduring the lunch break, there is a sanshin(stringed instrument) class. A very goodsanshin player and singer comes on Fridaysand teaches the group, they practice together,and he also stands in front of the microphoneand plays and sings for the whole sit-in group,and sometimes people come out and dance theOkinawan dance 'kachashi', a very easy danceto do and a very happy dance of celebration.

Everybody was … out on the sidewalk dancingto his music and a hate-speech truck came byand they just turned their backs to the shoutersand continued dancing. The truck passed by, Ithink, four times. It would pass by, do a u-turn,and come back again and do another u-turn,and the people on the truck would shout,

"Stop dancing; what are you doing dancing?You are not supposed to be having fun outthere! You are making fools of yourselves!Dancing here? Why?"

But, everyone just kept on dancing and finally

APJ | JF | | 0

22

the truck just went away, and everyone clappedand said, 'We beat them!' They were notignoring their antagonists, you can't reallyignore them because they are right there. Youcan't pretend that you don't hear it, but theprotestors snubbed them. They just refused toplay the game, the hate game, and they dancedright through to the end, very happily. That wasa triumph. That day, they turned a corner andthere has been less temptation to shout back. Ihaven't seen the hate speech group there thelast several times I have been there.

Maybe they have given up. They have to driveall the way from Itoman, and then they onlydrive by about four times They are never therelonger than a half hour, and then they have todrive all the way back. Maybe they havedecided that it is a waste of time, which itsurely is.

D.B.: I wonder how that mistaken perception ofthe anti-base movement developed. I hear itoften. I hear people talk about it. I hear militaryfolks sometimes talk about it.

C.D.L.: Yes, in logic it is called deductivereasoning rather than inductive. What theyimagine they are looking at, they deduce fromtheir right-wing ideology. China is the enemy;Henoko is being built to frighten China and todeter China's 'imminent' attack and, therefore -this is the deductive move - these people (theprotestors) must be the patsies of China,China's agents - therefore - they must begetting money from China and their lunchesmust be paid for by China. And, what they seebefore their eyes doesn't count as evidence. Ifthey would get out of their truck and come andlook, they would see people paying money forthe bento (lunch), and if they had anyknowledge about what was going on, they

would know that no one there is getting anymoney from China. All of the people there knowthat they are getting no money from China.

So, it is a way that the ideological mindsometimes works. The facts are deduced fromthe theories rather than the theories beingdeduced from the facts.

D.B.: It seems to involve a long history oflabeling as communist whatever speech oractions don't square with the establishedpower. Even when I was serving in the military,I often heard, wherever I was, whether it wasin Panama or in Korea or even in Japan, havingtaught with universities on the bases, I haveheard so many military and family membersreduce any protest to 'communism versuscapitalism'. There seems to be a clear over-simplification or dichotomy [drawn] that youfind in the thinking among people.

C.D.L.: What American rightist, or Japaneserightist, mean by 'communist' - especially theAmerican rightwing - what they mean by'communist' just doesn't work in contemporaryJapan, because there is a legal establishedCommunist Party. It is a legitimate electoralparty that has from many years back been non-violent and engaged in electoral politics. Theirelectoral politics has very little anymore to dowith Marxism. It is basically a liberal platform.They have their problems, and a lot of people inJapan dislike them for different reasons, butthey are not a conspiratorial violent set ofrevolutionary agents of a foreign power. Theyare a political party as they are in Italy and inFrance and in other countries. We are nottalking about the same thing. They (the neo-nationalists) are talking about communism asdeduced from rightwing ideology and distortedmemory of what communism was in the days of

APJ | JF | | 0

23

the Soviet Union. It just does not fit with whatJapan's Communist Party is now. The JapanCommunist Party is, in fact, a big part of the AllOkinawa (オール沖縄) coalition in Okinawa, andthere are some people who like to work withthem and some people who dislike it. They havea little rigidity in their thinking and theirorganizing, but they are not what the Americanrightwing imagines, by any means. They are aparliamentary political party that does its bestto get its people elected. The American right-wing image, again, is a case of deductiontaking precedence over induction.

D.B.: Seems like an over-simplification, seemsto dominate the minds of people who belong tothe anti-anti-base movement. They can't seemto see the plans being devised to destroy thisbay, they can't seem to see outside of the black-and-white box they have constructed.

C.D.L.: Well, you see similar things, though notas virulent, but similar distortions on the partof the left, or the progressive movement aswell. For example, sometimes we hear peoplesay, 'the Abe government is fascist'. And, it isnot. There are much more accurate ways ofcriticizing the Abe administration, much moreaccurate than saying that he is like Hitler. Idislike him, but we don't have brown shirtswalking down the streets, smashing windows,and dragging people out of their homes andinto the streets and beating them, which is howthe fascist movement started. The Nazimovement, fascism in Italy, the same thing,brown shirts, gangs of people randomly beatingup 'enemies' and so forth. This is also a kind ofdeductive thinking ...

"If a movement is very conservative and tryingto oppress us and is hateful, it must be thesame as Nazism."

It is a different variety, and it is more effectiveif you avoid stereotypes like that, but try toanalyze carefully what it is you are dealingwith.

M.S.: I want to ask if you have any ideas abouthow to encourage young people to engagemore in political demonstrations. They don'tseem to understand what is actually going on inOkinawa. Many of my friends are not informedenough.

C.D.L.: I don't have a nice trick, or a solution,or surefire plan. If I did, I would be trying toenact it. But, I was raised in the 1950s. That is,I went to junior high school, high school, andcollege, in the decade of the 1950s. We werecalled 'the silent generation'. The same thingsthat were said about us are said about youngpeople now: 'uninterested', 'neutral', 'it's gotnothing to do with me', 'don't know anythingabout it', 'apathetic', and so on. And it waspretty much true. How it happened that thatthe generation of the 1950s gradually becamethe youth movement in the 1960s is still amystery to me. It's very hard to understand,very hard to know how it happened. It seemedlike a natural evolution.

I was an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley in themid-50s. What they call The Youth Movement ofthe 1960s was already started a little bit atU.C. Berkeley in the '50s. There was a smallstudent movement. They seemed different fromwhat was called the 'Old Left' - the middle-aged, and aging people, who maintained theleftist movement ideology from the 1920sthrough the 1940s. There was something freshand new about it. It had to do not only withpolitical ideology, but lifestyle and music. The

APJ | JF | | 0

24

style of music changed, people started singingabout politics, folk music, very exciting youngnew singers like Bob Dylan. He appears at thebeginning of the 1960's actually.

I think, partly, it had to do with capturing akind of boredom with consumer society. Peoplewere sort of sickened, young people weredissatisfied with what they were given byconsumerism. It simply was not adventurous,exciting. They didn't feel quite alive. There wasa very popular movie that came out in themid-50s called Rebel Without a Cause. It wasone of only three movies that James Deanstarred in. It was a B movie, low budget, notvery well directed, not very well acted, exceptby James Dean. But the idea of Rebel Without aCause captured something about the 1950s.People wanted to rebel. Rebellion seemedinteresting, but the only way to rebel was tobecome a juvenile delinquent or something,become a punk, refuse to go to school, refuse toobey your teachers, refuse to obey yourparents, which is a little bit interesting, but notall that interesting. The idea of rebelling andactually having a cause somehow captured theimagination of youth at the beginning of the1960s. In the United States, the actual youthmovement was begun by black people in theSouth, the Civil Rights Movement. Many of theimportant movements in the US were firstbegun by black people, the idea of 'sit-in' wasinvented by black students. The very first bigpolitical action, was not staged by youngpeople, but the movement led by Martin LutherKing in Montgomery, Alabama, the 1955 BusBoycott. And, a few years later, the 'sit-ins',where black students would go into restaurantsthat said, 'We do not serve blacks' and sit at thetable, peacefully, and not be served, and staythere a l l day. They were hurt ing therestaurants because they couldn't have anybusiness.

It seems to me that more and more students inOkinawa are getting involved. I see more andmore young people coming to Henoko from themainland and from within Okinawa. When itbecomes clear that it's effective, when peoplereally understand that it works, and that thismovement is going to stop the construction, Ithink that will start to excite young people'simagination.

Standing in front of the Prefectural OfficeBuilding, and raising your fists and shoutingyour slogans, and marching down Kokusai Dori(International Street in Naha City) to be viewedby tourists only, most of them from Taiwannow, it's not interesting. It's ritual; it'smannerism. It looks like satisfying your feelingthat you are doing something, but withoutbeing really effective. I can see why youngpeople would not be attracted to that. Much ofthat is carried out in the spirit of nostalgia bygray-haired people like me, remembering thegood old days when those demonstrations wereeffective. But, it is true, sitting-in in front of thegate at Henoko and failing to stop the trucks isalso not so exciting. Now, the movement is,right now, as we are talking, reorganizing itselfin such a way as to have the ability actually tostop the trucks from entering. It is trying to get1,000 people out in front of the gate. Otheractions are being talked about. When it lookslike this is a movement that's a real adventure,not carried out in the spirit of nostalgia butactually fighting - not violently fighting - butwhen it becomes clear that this is a movementthat really can prevent the construction fromhappening, and defeat this plan, it will seemmuch more exciting and interesting to Okinawastudents.

There is another thing that has made it difficultfor young people to participate and that is thatsuch a very large number in Henokoparticipating in the past have been from the

APJ | JF | | 0

25

mainland. There is a tendency, since Okinawahas a history of being colonized by themainland, for people from the mainland to takeover and make the movement theirs ,consciously or unconsciously. It's like a habit. Ithink some local people go there and lookaround and say, "Oh, this is a mainlandmovement." And they feel very uncomfortableand don't come back. At some point, I canimagine Okinawan young people organizingand taking over the movement, becoming themovement, becoming the leaders, taking overfrom the older generation and taking over fromthe people from the mainland, saying in effect,'This is our movement'.

There was a point in the civil rights movementin the U.S. when people in the South, the blackleaders of the Student Nonviolent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) said to the white studentscoming down from the North …

"Don't come down here anymore, we want youto organize in your own cities in the North. Wewill have our own movement now. We don'tneed any more white people coming to theSouth in solidarity. Thank you for coming in thepast, but, no more."

And that was a great shock … to the whiteliberal and white radical students in the North.It was very painful. But it was essential, at thattime, to make that move. It had a huge effect inchanging the Civil Rights Movement into theBlack Power Movement. People started talkingabout empowerment. And that made JamesBrown's song possible: 'Say it loud; I'm black,and I'm proud'. That whole black pridemovement began with that.

I think if the movement became a movementled by Okinawan youth, it would become muchmore exciting and much more interesting tothem than going to one of these movementsand finding themselves in the second strata.The mainland young people maintain theirstrong position in these movements in partbecause they come for a few weeks and goback. There are always new faces. A few havemoved down here and stayed on. But mostly, itis for a few days, a few weeks, a summervacation, or something like that. There arepeople who get on the bus saying, 'This is theseventh time that I have come to Okinawa'.Very proud of having done that. Of course it isall well intentioned, but I hear that it makes ituncomfortable for local people who participate.

But, that can be overcome by taking over.

C. Douglas Lummis, a former US Marinestationed on Okinawa, is the author of RadicalDemocracy and other books in Japanese andEnglish. An Asia-Pacific Journal contributingeditor, he formerly taught at Tsuda College.

Sunagawa Maki is a second-year researcherin the Graduate School of InterculturalCommunication at Okinawa ChristianUniversity where she is taking up studies insocial semiotics and the signs for developmentthat prevail in public relations literature. She ispresently working towards a graduatequalification focused on the McDonaldization ofOkinawan culture influenced by long-standingconditions of foreign occupation.

Daniel Broudy is Professor of Rhetoric and

APJ | JF | | 0

26

Applied Linguistics at Okinawa ChristianUniversity. He has taught in the U.S., Korea,and Japan. His research activities includecritical analysis of textual and symbolicrepresentations of power that dominates post-

industrial culture. He is a co-editor forSynaesthesia: Communication Across Culturesand writes about discourse practices that shapepublic opinion.