AINU GLOBAL
How the US Has Harmed Japan's Indigenous Ainu and Ryukyuans
During the latter half of the 19th century, the Meiji government enlisted the expertise of American advisors to assist in exercising direct control over the northern island of Hokkaido. In the modern era, since the American occupation of Okinawa in 1945, the United States has upheld a military presence on the island. These two instances of American involvement in Japan exemplify how, across time, American intervention has had major consequences on the lives of Japan’s two indigenous peoples: the Ainu and the Ryukyuans. Doing so compares two vastly contextually unique indigenous histories: the Ainu experience with American assistance to the Japanese colonization effort in the 19th century and the Ryukyuan experience with American military presence in the 20th and 21st centuries. American advisors and their actions in the northern island were instrumental in influencing the direction and speed of the Japanese effort to transform Hokkaido from the land of the Ainu to the land of the Japanese, thus precipitating the plight of the Ainu. The US military presence in Okinawa has inflicted a host of issues onto the indigenous Ryukyuans of the island, including the seizure of land during the “terror of bulldozers and bayonets,” crimes and particularly sex crimes committed by US soldiers, jet crashes, environmental pollution, and noise pollution. Yet, the conventional historical framework portrays the American presence in Hokkaido as that of pioneering and heroic modernizers, and the Ryukyuan voices are unconstitutionally ignored in their protests against the US military presence. Recognizing the Americans as a significant party in the history of harm against the Ainu and Ryukyuans questions the conventional social conscience that erases and ignores how the US has affected the most vulnerable groups in a Japanese society caught up in the myth of homogeneity.