Lo(o)sing the Edge and my story.

Teaiwa, Teresia. 2001. “L(o)osing the Edge.” The Contemporary Pacific 13 (2): 343–365.

            Teresia K Teaiwa is a native of the Pacific.  Teresia was born in Hawaii to a Kiribati father and African American mother, raised in Fiji and obtained her PhD in Santa Cruz. In Lo(o)sing the Edge, she takes an interesting approach to critically reflect her understandings and experiences in academic politics for Native Pacific Cultural Studies.  First of all, her two-columned writing style is creative and made me think where the edge is. Is she trying to call two edges to meet? Can the edge become the center?

            The native is personal.  Starting from the explanation of the meaning of her name, Teresia raises critical questions about academic disciplines and institutions of cultural studies, native studies, and Pacific studies. On the right side of her article, Teresia claims that Pacific studies is not merely an academic field; rather about people and relationships (352).  She also states that Pacific studies need that homegrown theory that meets realities of the islands.  On the left side, she self-reflectively examines her own positionality and methods of academic representation as a native scholar.

            This paper reminded me of my academic presentation experience at Waseda University in Tokyo in March 2012.  Let me share the story here. This year, 2012 is 40 years since the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese administration from 27 years of the US military administration.  At the point of 40 years, the symposium that I attended was organized and held at Waseda University for an academic opportunity to rethink Okinawa and Okinawan Studies. It was organized to create a space for dialogues among pioneering and young researchers of Okinawan Studies from Japan and overseas.  It is also aimed to take interdisciplinary approach to Okinawan Studies beyond one of area studies in Japanese universities.   

            For this symposium, me and my other Okinawan friends organized a panel and made our first challenge to current Okinawan Studies.  Consisting of five women, the panel theme was “Our Dilemma on ‘Okinawan Studies’: From Contemporary Okinawan Unai (women) Perspectives.”  Organizing this panel, we had a few things that we all shared and we thought them very important.  First, we all are women.  Second, we all were born and raised in Okinawa AFTER the reversion that means we didn’t experience the big regime change in the post-war Okinawan history.  Third, we all experienced studying at the University of Hawaii.  Our learning experiences in Hawaii from Kanaka Maoli’s practices to decolonize Hawaii in academia definitely inspired us in many ways, and made us to critically think and search for our ways of facing Okinawan Studies.   

            Preparing for the panel discussion, we all were very nervous.  As Okinawans, as women, and as young researchers, we were very nervous how much we can speak about Okinawa in front of many male non-Okinawan scholars at a Japanese university and how we want to face and speak Okinawan Studies.  Are we becoming native informant?  At the presentations, we shared our own realization in researching Okinawa and our work-in-progress approaches to Okinawan Studies.   　

            First, Kayatani criticized to research Okinawa as “a trendy research topic” and raised an important question of how Okinawan and non-Okinawan researchers could effectively approach Okinawa.  We are expecting research that will connect social movement and social change.  She also pointed out researchers should face the subject of research with our responsibility and commitment to them.  Then next, I criticized approaching Okinawan Studies as an extension of area studies or minority studies in Japan.  I argued how we can take an indigenous approach to Okinawan Studies to more holistically and interdisciplinary understand self-determination of Okinawans. 

            Next, three panelists introduced their ongoing practices and challenge of decolonizing Okinawan Studies. An educational specialist Akamine took an example of Hawaiian Studies and created a syllabus for Okinawan Studies 107. Proposing her methods of teaching Okinawan Studies, she discussed how education could link to social movements of the community.  Oyakawa was inspired by punana leo Hawaiian language immersion school, and recently she started a private Okinawan language immersion school and has strived for our language revitalization.  Sakihara shared her experience in organizing Okinawa women’s festival last year.  Following pre-reversion generation women who worked hard to achieve “the reversion” of Okinawa and achieving women’s equality in a patriarchal society, Sakihara explored the next step beyond equal rights for Okinawan women.    

            Taking feminist and indigenous approaches, our panel as a whole questioned if and how Okinawan Studies until now, has encouraged Okinawans’ self-determination and we discussed, from now on, how we want to decolonize Okinawa and Okinawan Studies. 

            Although it was a symposium about Okinawan Studies, the very sad fact for us was it was a held in a Japanese University and we as Okinawan researchers could not even present in Okinawan language.  It seemed that which university should host the first and biggest conference for “the 40 years anniversary.”

            After discussing what language we would use for our panel, we decided to speak in Japanese, English, and Uchina Yamatoguchi which means pidgin Japanese.  Rather than using difficult academic jargon from the beginning to the end, we consciously tried to speak in a way that we usually speak to each other.  It might sound not-intellectual, but that was our small resistance in Japanese academia. 

            By putting our personal experiences into words in our ways, we also wanted to share important emotional parts of doing research.  It is because researching Okinawa for us is ongoing process of decolonizing our own mind and facing dilemmas.  I don’t know how our “unique” panel attracted audiences, but the room was full.  After the presentation, all of us felt that our talk flowed very well and successfully articulated our common themes of decolonization and responsibility in Okinawan Studies. Yet there was one unexpected thing.  We expected to get a lot of critical comments and questions from the audience.  However, there were almost none of them.  Honestly I was relieved.  At the same time, little disappointed. I don’t know if it’s a Japanese academia style or it’s because they didn’t really understand what we share as indigenous researchers or if they got shocked by our resistance towards them.  Yet, without any critical feedback, I felt something was missing.  I wonder if we are still standing on the edge.