Everyday sensing of entanglements as a form of resistance to U.S. militarization in Japan

Abstract (English)

While the rapid analytical shift in anthropology toward the entanglement between humans and more-than-human beings has significantly contributed to dismantling the Cartesian binary of human and nature and to critiquing anthropocentrism, this work always entails the risk of othering research subjects and naturalizing their inherent relationship with nature as if they were statically nurtured within their own confinement. In my presentation, I critically interrogate this essentializing approach to human–more-than-human entanglement by shifting analytical attention to the political-economic structures that produce this entanglement, and further, to how this entanglement is reproduced in everyday life in relation to those structures. To illustrate this conceptual invitation, I explore how more-than-human flora and fauna indigenous to Okinawa—particularly dugongs and the Okinawa Rail—serve as pivotal constituents of an already-existing, yet alternative ontology that remains actively mobilized in ongoing protests against U.S. militarization.

Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, was originally the Ryukyu Kingdom before being colonized by Japan in the 19th century. Today, colonial relations with Japan persist, as epitomized by the excessive U.S. military presence: Okinawa hosts 80% of U.S. military bases in Japan, enduring both physical and psychological harm—especially to women—and catastrophic environmental destruction. People in Okinawa have opposed this militarization, conducting daily sit-in protests for more than 15 years. Based on my two months of fieldwork in these sit-in protests, I examine how flora and fauna around the military bases have become relational agents that, in connection with the protesters, oppose the construction of a new base not as mere tools of political strategy, but as co-constituents in the struggle.

Although dugongs—an endangered marine mammal living in Okinawa—have not been seen in the past six years, seaweeds with dugong bite marks continues to be discovered. Each time such marks are found, protesters organize press conferences to emphasize the urgent need for environmental protection, calling on municipal authorities to pause construction and investigate them. Importantly, protesters expand the notion of resistance to include more-than-human beings not to instrumentalize them for political gain, but to position both human and non-human entities as integral to the struggle. During the sit-ins, they recount surviving the aftermath of war by relying on the scarce food found in forests and oceans, highlighting the deep entanglement that made their lives possible, and hence calling for the necessity to protect nature to have a reciprocal way of living with it. This entanglement is constantly reproduced in everyday life through their observations of ecological changes—such as the increasing number of dead corals and the decline in shellfish—as well as through their sensing of vital signs of survival, for example, the haunting birdcall of the Okinawa Rail.