潛在主權과 '在日'의 딜레마

Dilemma of the residual sovereignty and 'zainichi

As a preliminary work for the analysis of Okinawans residing in Japan proper, I will review in this paper the status and identity of Okinawa in the early period od American occupation of Japan. At first, I analyze the logic of Japan's residual sovereignty over Okinawa and the transformation of its meaning. As the joint product of U.S. and Japan, that logic emphasized the renewal of the administrative authority of Japan over Okinawa. But it protected the maintenance of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. After 1957, when Eisenhower's New Look policy was stabilized, the Japanese translation of 'residual sovereignty' was fixed to 'senzai(potential)-shuken' from 'zansan(residue)-shuken.' This meant that the social power of Okinawans became suppressed into potentiality by the U.S. and Japanese alliance. Secondly, I focus on the phenomenon of the birth and death of 'zainichi-Okinawan' identity in this period. During the early post-war period, Okinawans were treated as a foreign ethic minority by GHQ. Simultaneously, Japanese government pressured them to choose Japanese nationally. Their social status was so obscure that various problems arose with regard to nationally and family register. 'zainichi-Okinawan' identity was a strategy for Okinawans to use U.S. paternalism to their advantages, that is, to their basic survival under the harsh post-war conditions. It was an ambiguous identity between ethnicity and nation. However, the escalation of the cold war in East Asia of the early 1950s forced Okinawans to give up zainichi identity and adapt an assimilative nationalism.