Ethnography about protest activity against administrative separation in Amami

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K20871
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Cultural anthropology; Area studies
• Research Institution: Okinawa International University
• Principal Investigator: OIKAWA TAKASHI 沖縄国際大学, 総合文化学部, 講師 (60728442)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 復帰運動 / 年齢階梯制社会 / 市民社会

Outline of Final Research Achievements

After the World war II, Amami archipelago (a group of islands in Kagoshima) was separated politically from Japan and ruled by America. Under the administrative separation continued from 1946 to 1953, people in Amami had claimed to rejoin Japanese governance. Their living conditions were poor and urgent, nevertheless political activities in Amami were done with thoroughly nonviolence like demo and hanger strike. They won their request with just legitimate political procedures in 1953, and this case is noteworthy in Japanese democracy.
I will analyze this case surrounding the national territory not from political science or international relations but from the point of view of cultural anthropology. The hypothesis I inspected by fieldwork was that there was some kind of folk culture and traditional social structure that characterized it in the foundation of Amami's political movement. I discovered that the most influential was the culture of youth group and their life stage system.

Free Research Field

民俗学・文化人類学