Okinawan Studies: BLOG / News

Center for Okinawan Studies Public Lecture Series - February 27, 2017

Center for Okinawan Studies Public Lecture Series Presents: Cultural Hybridity and Indigeneity through the Song "Pathway of Coming Together" for Yonaguni Island, Okinawa"

• Speaker: Yuan-Yu Kuan, Ph.D. candidate of Music in Ethnomusicology at the University of  Hawai‘i at Mānoa
• Date: February 27, 2017 (Monday)
• Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
• Place: Tokioka Room (Moore Hall 319)

"Dunan, currently known as Yonaguni Island, was the last conquered territory of the Ryukyu kingdom in 1510 and is now marketed for tourism as the westernmost island of Japan. Approximately 108 km away from Taiwan’s east coast, the island’s location along with its history embody a series of political tensions on three levels: international (Taiwan, Japan, China, and the US), national (Okinawa and Japan), and pre-national (Dunan and the Ryukyu kingdom). Each of these tensions not only contributes to the island’s liminal status but also informs the ways the islanders articulate, perform, and hybridize their cultural identity.

Investigating these anxieties, this presentation examines the meaning-making process of one of the “oldest” musical pieces on the island, called “Miti Sunai” or “Pathway of Coming Together,” encompassing three occasions: 1) the annual International Billfish Tournament, 2) the protest against the deployment of Japanese Self-Defense Forces, and 3) the launching ceremony of two water vessels re-enacting a pre-historical migration from Taiwan to the island. Using the notion of pathway from this song along with Greg Dening’s concept of “way-finding”, I suggest that although the three events resonate with Japan’s “Southern Islands Ideology”, the (re)appearances of the song “Miti Sunai” reify Dunan’s cultural hybridity. This presentation argues that this hybridity as indigenous critique decenters the hegemonic narratives imposed upon the island’s culture by displaying a mixture of political realities—simultaneously speaking against its colonial past, critiquing its subaltern present, and envisioning an indigenous future."