To die a guest at home: On Oh my name, stand and walk on! A posthumous collection of the works of Nakaya Kōkichi
SHINJŌ Ikuo (Translated by Mark WINCHESTER)
ABSTRACT Nakaya Kokichi is a writer whose work illustrates a singular unfolding of intellectual thought in Okinawa under the US military occupation. This article sheds light upon the political potential of Nakaya’s thoughts through a close reading of his posthumous collection. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the three aspects of his thought. First, Nakaya’s texts reveal the violent nature of “interpellation” that sustains the system of the US-Japan military alliance. Nakaya’s work exposes the way in which such interpellation at once subjectifies those who live in Okinawa and, therefore, prohibits them from becoming political subjects. Second, Nakaya’s writings critique the politics of Okinawan nationalist identity and seek an alternative political future in the solidarity among non-subjectified bodies. Third, Nakaya’s thoughts suggests a paradoxical possibility of Kakushi or a death in a foreign land even in one’s own so-call “homeland,” helps to resituate Okinawa as an intersection of “refugees,” who remain unable to belong to nation-states, and of their “histories that open up laterally.”
Keywords: Occupation, Okinawa, interpellation, political subject, non-subjectivative bodies
Notes on the contributor
Ikuo Shinjo was born in 1967, in Okinawa and is now a Professor at the University of the Ryukyu. Ikuo Shinjo’s major is modern literature of Okinawa, Japan, modern thought, gender critics, post-colonial critics. He has published the following books: Okiwabungaku toiu kuwadate (2004), Toraisuru Okinawa (2007), Okinawa wo kiku (2010), and Okinawno kizu toiu kairo (2014).
Notes on the translator
Mark Winchester is a lecturer at the Research Institute for Japanese Studies, Kanda University of International Studies. His research concerns modern and contemporary Ainu intellectual history.