The American Village in Okimawa: redefining security in a "militourist" landscape

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  • The American Village in Okinawa : Redefining Security in a "Militourist" Landscape

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Focusing on a tourist site called the "American Village," this paper examines the socio-political interdependency of militarism and tourism in Okinawa by working from cultural theorist Teresia Teaiwa's (1999) neologism "militourism," "a phenomenon by which a military or paramilitary force ensures the smooth running of a tourist industry, and that same tourist industry masks the military force behind it" (p.252). Expanding on this concept, this paper discusses the workings of tourism and U.S. militarism in Okinawa as an interlocking system that supports a tourist economy and simultaneously disguises militarized masculine violence against the local people, environment, and culture in Okinawa. By using an antimilitarist feminist and cultural studies approach, this paper makes visible militarized violence against women in Okinawa. Modeled on Seaport Park in San Diego (a U.S. military town), the American Village was built in 1992 on the central part of Okinawa, Chatan Town, 54% of which is used for the U.S. military facilities. Due to the combination of the U.S. militarization of Okinawa and the recent celebration of U.S. popular culture, this miniaturized simulacrum of America has been incorporated into Okinawan landscape to be enjoyed by the younger generation of Okinawans, tourists from mainland Japan, and U.S. GIs from nearby bases. This paper argues that the American Village functions as an ideological justification of Okinawan colonization by the U.S. and Japanese forces, exploiting Okinawan nature and Okinawan women's bodies and deploying a fantasy of American GIs as a means to capitalize on militarism. Finally this paper discusses a need to incorporate a grounded antimilitarist feminist praxis and a community-based vision of security into the ideas of security reform in order to achieve Okinawan women's empowerment and the goal of true human security.

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