In 1968, the skeleton of a boy was discovered at the Yamashita-cho archaeological site, near Naha Port, Okinawa. Testing for carbon 14 revealed it to be 32,000 years old, the oldest Homo sapiens sapiens in East Asia. Around 35,000 years ago, some Austronesians, using the “bridge” of islands, left Taiwan, passed through the islands of Yaeyama, Miyako, Okinawa, Amami and arrived in Kagoshima, Japan. Over thousands of years they formed the paleolithic Jomon people throughout the Japanese archipelago, from Ryukyu to Hokkaido. There is a very big gap in the History of Okinawa and its people.
In recent history, the first references are found in Chinese manuscripts from the end of the 7th century. The Portuguese pioneers called the Ryukyu Kingdom “Léquias” and the Chinese “Lu Xu”. The name Okinawa was first mentioned by a Chinese monk named Ganjin in the year 753. Only in the year 1372 did the founder of the Chinese Ming Dynasty, Hung Wu Ti, use the current spelling for Okinawa, which was later adopted by the Japanese and Koreans. Geneticists were surprised by the fact that the genetic affinity of Koreans with the Okinawans is slightly greater than that of Koreans with other Japanese, who have a greater affinity with the Han Chinese. Studies also suggest genetic links between the island of Okinawa and the Island of Crete, possibly associated with Dutch sailors, and with Sumer, the Caucasus and Northern Europe, probably through mixed-race Chinese traders from Xinjiang, on the border with Europe.
Due to its geopolitical condition, Okinawa had to maintain cultural and business relations with the people of that region, formerly with fiscal subordination to China and, much later, to Japan. China's control over the Kingdom of Lu Xu was done through concession of scholarships for training the most talented young people in schools in China. In addition to Austronesian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean traders, several expeditions by Western people who were interested in exercising their influence and/or political and economic dominance in the region passed through.
Okinawa, a gateway
With the closure of Japan's borders with the rest of the world, except for China and the Netherlands, Okinawa was a distant gateway to Japan. In about fifty years, from 1803 to 1857, more than thirty times, European and American troops landed in Okinawa. The best known was that of the United States Navy, commanded by Matthew Calbraith Perry (1853-1854) who forced Japan to open its ports to the world. The unanimous and surprising opinion on the part of Europeans was that in the Kingdom of Lu Xu there were no weapons and no incidences of violence due to the unfailing courtesy and friendship between all classes, the intelligence of “educated people”, the absence of robberies in the population common and found it strange when they did not accept payments for offerings and services provided to foreign visitors. Probably, this social behavior of the Okinawans – based on the philosophy of kindness – captivated and disarmed all intentions of the use of force by Westerners, accustomed to the policy of predatory conquest; to dominate the Lu Xu Kingdom, strength was not necessary.
But the rural population, to defend themselves from thieves and looters, had to develop a culture of defense with their hands free, karate, and the use of sticks and work tools. This condition of disarmament proved fatal for the kingdom when, in 1609, authorized by the Tokugawa shogunate, the Shimazu fief family of Satsuma domain sent an expeditionary force to conquer Ryukyu. The predominant religions or philosophical thoughts were Confucianism, Shintoism and Buddhism. Some Christian missionaries were sent to the Kingdom by Europeans and North Americans to begin a conquest by mind and prepare the front for political and economic domination, but they were unsuccessful. Due to the lack of land and natural resources, the Island's economy has always been difficult. Its survival and success depended on good relationships with merchant sailors.
Okinawa and the Meiji Restoration
Okinawa Island became a place to supply food, water and fuel (coal) for the boats, ships and steamships that passed through there; it was also the place of rest and entertainment for sailors. From the beginning of 1800 until around 1850, the Ryukyu Islands were devastated by a sequence of at least thirteen natural disasters, including typhoons, tsunamis and cholera epidemics, with great loss of human life. The population must have fluctuated between just 150 and 200 thousand people, with a lot of poverty. If that wasn't enough, with the opening of the ports, followed by the Meiji Restoration, radical changes occurred in the administrative structure of Okinawa; the Kingdom of Ryukyu was disbanded, transforming Okinawa into a Japanese province and abolishing the taxation system in favor of China, but imposing other taxes in favor of Japan.
The Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926) and early Showa (1926-1989) periods were periods full of political and economic problems for Japan; There was impoverishment in rural areas and an increase in unemployed people in cities, with negative consequences even in Okinawa, with the increase in tax rates. These were the reasons why the Okinawans, especially the poorer heimin , began to emigrate, initially to the region of Nara, Wakayama, Kiyoto, Osaka and Hyogo, then to Hawaii, USA, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia , Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia and many Micronesian islands. Shigeru Narahara, who governed Okinawa from 1892 to 1908, had already made some important changes, such as organizing the jiwari-sei system in agriculture and spreading the education system with an emphasis on basic, then secondary, vocational and female education.
The jiwari-sei system was the method of collective land exploration, where each local villager, head of a family, had an area to be cultivated, but limited to a few years or decades. Everyone cooperated to pay the annual taxes to the government, which, for some just reason, was not in a position to fulfill the obligation, and the other villagers helped cover the expenses. It was the formation of the collective spirit of the Okinawans that the immigrants also adopted in Brazil, organizing cooperatives, including spreading the moai system known to many. In Campo Grande, MS, many non-Nikkei Brazilians can currently be seen organizing moai .
After the forced opening of Japan, many positive events occurred, but also extremely negative events. In contrast to the Europeans and North Americans, the Japanese military also felt entitled to create its empire in Asia and Southeast Asia. For the “uchinanchu” (People of Okinawa), the Okinawa Holocaust was the worst tragedy. After the Second World War, with the direct or indirect losses of a third of the civilian population, and the terrible physical and psychological conditions of the surviving families, the desire to emigrate remained even stronger, but they no longer had the economic conditions to bear the costs. travel expenses. Some who already had family abroad were called by them with their tickets paid, yobi-yose . In the 1950s, with sovereignty over the Island of Okinawa, the US government, interested in regaining its credibility among the population, invested in colonization programs and settlements for Okinawans in South America, in partnership with the receiving countries, also of interest to US foreign policy.
Japanese immigration
Early Japanese migrants, including Okinawans, had the goal of going back and forth. But the reality was very different, many managed to return, but most did not. They had to create and live in a new society, a multiethnic and multicultural society, generating psychosocial issues, which were also new. Discrimination has always been present in the middle and upper classes, which has decreased over the years, mainly due to Japan's economic growth and the example of the Issei and their descendants carrying out hard work with honesty and competence. The first marriages between different ethnicities were quite traumatic, even more so because they occurred with people with less education and a “lower” social class. Many could not bear this situation. The first mixed breed children were well-accepted, healthy children who were the subject of curiosity. Over time it was found that many of the children were very beautiful; Young Nisei and Sansei began to have dreams of dating and marrying a mixed race woman. Today, many gaijins want to marry “Japanese women”. Increasingly, new generations have a less traumatic attitude and participate in their new society as equals.
Note: The saga and strength of the Shinzato Family, one of the pioneers of immigration, was brilliantly portrayed in the book “Uchinanchu, Citizens of the World – Dreams and Illusions of a Visionary and a Heroine”, a 600-page work written by journalist Eron Brum , with the valuable collaboration of Ilton Guenhiti Shinzato.
*Published in the newspaper O Progresso de Dourados (MS) on 02/08/2014, this essay is being reproduced here with due permission from the author's family.
© 2020 Ilton Guenhiti Shinzato
