Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito

[PB 14.1 (2013) 7-32] doi:10.1558/prbt.v14i1.7

Perfect Beat (print) ISSN 1038-2909 Perfect Beat (online) ISSN 1836-0343

Philip Hayward Daniel Long

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito Philip Hayward is Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor Research at Southern Cross University, Lismore, and editor of Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures.

Division of Research Southern Cross University NSW 2480, Australia [email protected]

Daniel Long is Professor of Japanese Linguistics at Tokyo Metropolitan University.

Japanese Linguistics, Graduate School of Humanities Tokyo Metroplitan University 1-1 Minami-Osawa, Hachioji-shi Tokyo-to, 192-0397 Japan [email protected]

Abstract The remote, southern Japanese island of Minami Daito was first settled in 1900. It is part of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa but is geographically distant from the main Okinawan archipelago and displays many non-Okinawan linguistic, cultural and social characteristics. The island was settled by two culturally disparate groups: pioneers from Hachjio Island, 1150 kilometres to the north east, who established a sugarcane industry on the previously uninhabited island; and workers from Okinawa, some 450 kilometres to the west, who were brought in to work in the fields and refineries run by Hachijoan supervisors. Over the last century the island has experienced a process of rapprochement and consolidation between the two communities that has resulted in linguistic syncreses and, more recently, the incorporation of Hachijoan descendents into a local music culture that primarily derives from Okinawa. Since the late 1980s a small group of musicians have coalesced in a musical initiative that has, to date, produced several CDs, a number of original songs and a performing ensemble that has gained external concert and media exposure. This activity has created a sense of cultural cohesion and a distinct identity for contemporary Minami Daitoans. This article analyses the historical process of consolidation; the context and nature of the musical material performed in recent years (with particular regard to song texts); and the manner in which the island community inter-relates with other areas of Japan. Keywords: cultural consolidation; Hachijo; language variation; Minami Daito; music; Okinawa; shima uta

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Cultural interaction and consolidation This article is concerned with the island of Minami Daito and the cultural identities of its two ethnic groups.1 Definitions of ethnicity vary, but are often expressed in terms of the shared beliefs, customs and characteristics of social groups usually (although not exclusively) connected by antecedence and ‘bloodlines’. The Okinawan and Hachijoan communities discussed in this article can be understood as comprising different ethnicities in various senses of the word, and the two groups certainly see themselves as belonging to separate groups.2 Writing during a decade that had seen intense inter-ethnic conflict in various regions, Cesare Poppi argued for constructive engagements with notions of ethnicity as potentially positive aspects of societies: Far from being the resurgence of obsolete, ‘archaic’ or ‘primordial’ feelings, as some liberal thinkers in despair still appear to think … ethnicity is but one specification of the contemporary renegotiation of the terms of engagement between the local and the global, the specific and what used to be called the ‘universal’ (1997: 286).

He also identified that ethnicity ‘appears to give the lie to modernist assumptions about the obsolescence of localized, bounded institutional and cultural apparatuses’ (1997: 284) and argued that it is ‘therefore important to understand its specificities in the context of dynamics that are of crucial import’ (1997: 286). One of the contexts of the local dynamics on Minami Daito is that of the island’s existence on the periphery of a modern nation-state (i.e. Japan) and of the interaction between two (nationally) peripheral communities on the island. In this regard, we draw on Kuwahara, Ozaki and Nishimura’s analysis of ‘transperipheral networks’ in Japan (2007) and the manner in which it prompts consideration of ‘broader alternative alignments of regional, national and transnational peoples, cultures and activities’ (2007: 11).

1. The Japanese name of the island discussed in this article ends in a long ‘o’ vowel. Long and short vowels are phonemically distinct in Japanese and we have tried in this article to consistently use macrons over long vowels. We have had to make exceptions for this where we are directly quoting English sources that didn’t follow this practice. We also chose not to use macrons for the island’s name itself (using Daito, rather than Daitō) because macrons would have been out of place in English derivations like ‘Daitōan’. For the same reason, we decided not to use macrons in the place names which would otherwise be written Hachijō and Ryūkyū as well. 2. The culture (in particular, the language) of Hachijo are typically seen as a subset of main island Japanese culture (a notable one, but a subset nonetheless). In contrast, Okinawan culture, is typically viewed (both from main island Japanese as well as by Okinawans themselves) as being more of a sister culture to main island Japanese (often called Yamato) culture than as a subcategory. In this way, the amalgamation of Hachijoan and Okinawan cultures on Minami Daito can be viewed more generally as the mixture of Yamato and Okinawa cultures. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 9 This article examines interactions and interactional dynamics between two ethnic groups that have co-existed and interacted in a small, ‘localized and bounded’ island space to which both re-located at a similar historical moment and with neither thereby having the moral authority of their ethnicity as marking them as the legitimate indigenous inhabitants of the locale. The latter is significant since indigeneity brings a powerful force to play in inter-group relations and its absence allows for a less polarized engagement of parties as to the legitimacy of their presence and cultural heritage. Analysing situations in which different ethnic groups interact with each other in the same social spaces, Gregory Bateson coined the term schismogenesis (Bateson 1935) to refer to the generation of responses between groups and identified two broad tendencies within this: a. ‘symmetrical schismogenesis’, whereby different factions, ethnic or national groups compete in an equivalent manner (such as trade wars, arms races etc.) b. ‘complementary schismogenesis’ in which interactions between less equally placed groups occupying contiguous or closely implicated spaces (such as those involved in ‘dominance-submission’ or ‘succoringdependence’ relationships) engage in ‘mutually promoting actions [which] are essentially dissimilar but mutually appropriate’ ([1949] 2000: 109). He characterized the second pattern as having four potential outcomes: 1. 2. 3. 4.

the destructive distortion (of one or other) party3 the eradication of one of the parties a stable but dynamic equilibrium the fusion of the two parties (ibid.).

Whereas the first two outcomes are ones in which one group irreparably distorts and/or terminally undermines the other, the situation on Minami Daito has involved the latter two options. Our analysis examines the first phase with particular regard to linguistic aspects and the second with regard to the role of music and, in particular, song composition. Through this analysis we outline the manner in which language and music can have a reparative and consolidating impact on communities characterized by ethnic difference. 3. Outcome (1) was introduced as a pertinent factor within discussions of the commodification of various non-western musics by western recording companies in a seminal article by Steven Feld (1994). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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These original ethnic differences are manifested in separate identities for the two groups. The emerging sense of a unified (or more accurately, syncretic) Minami Daitoan culture reveals a new sense of identity as well (Long 2004). The contact linguist Robert Le Page developed the idea that identity was not only something people ‘possessed’ but also something that they expressed in what he called ‘acts of identity’. Le Page saw the mere act of an individual selecting which of the language varieties he or she could speak (standard English, a regional variety of Spanish, creole English, a regional non-standard dialect of English, etc.) to actually use in a given situation as an act expressing that speaker’s identity. The ‘acts of identity’ framework (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985) can be extended to include expressive artistic acts such as the composing or performing of songs. Le Page maintained that speakers adopt the language varieties of groups they wish to be identified with, to the extent that: 1. they can identify the desirable group 2. they have both adequate access to that group, and the ability to analyse that group’s behaviour (in the case of language, their speech patterns) 3. they have a strong enough motivation to ‘join’ them, and this motivation is either reinforced or rejected by the group 4. they have the ability to modify their own behaviour. This framework was designed to explain language variety choice, but in this article we will employ it to understand choices about music as an expression of cultural identity. Moreover, we will see that, in the case of Minami Daitoans, people are not simply identifying with one or another pre-existing group, but creating a new group through cultural consolidation. We examine these issues through an analysis of Minami Daito music informed by our interviews with some of the people who have created it. First, however, we introduce the socio-historical background upon which this cultural consolidation has occurred.

Initial settlement and socio-economic organization Minami Daito, located 450 kilometres east of the Okinawan capital of Naha, is an elevated (and partially collapsed) coral atoll that comprises a coastal rim and a sunken and boggy interior. The coast consists mostly of rocky cliffs and there are no beaches or natural landing areas. The rim is known as the hagu; dwellings and sugarcane fields are located in hagu-shita (below the hagu) and the hagu-ue (atop the hagu) is used mostly to plant windbreak tree lines (see Figure 1). The island is now home to a stable population of around 1,400 (with another 500 or so temporary residents working on construction activities).

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Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 11

Figure 1: Cross-section view of Minami Daito topography (based on Ōsawa and Ōsawa 1997)

While Ryukyuan mariners knew of the island’s location for centuries and while its name appears in ancient written records (as Ufuagari-jima—‘the island of the far east’), its topography made it almost impossible to land on. There are no archaeological traces of pre-modern settlement and the island is usually regarded as being ‘discovered’ in 1820 by Russian Navy lieutenant Sachar Ivanovič Ponafidin of the Russian ship Borodino,4 who named the island the ‘South Borodino’,5 a term that is also used today locally as an alternative appellation. The island’s settlement arose from the expansionist impulse that followed the opening up of Japan to international trade and networking in the Meiji period (1868–1912).6 In the 1880s and 1890s Japanese traders and entrepreneurs began to explore opportunities among the islands of what Japan termed the Nanyō (South Seas), including Micronesia and areas further south. This enterprise included participation in the pearling trade that led to settlements of Japanese pearling operators, divers and support personnel of various kinds in the Torres Strait (based on Thursday Island7) and in north and north-western Australian ports such as Darwin, Broome and Cossack. This expansionist enterprise was of particular interest to the inhabitants of Hachijo island (300 kilometres south of Tokyo) whose economic opportunities and potential for population expansion were severely constrained by the island’s narrow arable coastal perimeter (surrounding a steep interior) and the difficulty of producing suitable export material for main island Japanese markets. In 1888, a Hachijoan entrepreneur named Han’emon Tamaoki (‘Tamaki’ in some records) addressed these issues by attempting to exploit the resources of

4. Not to be confused with the later Borodino class of destroyers built between 1899 and 1905 and unsuccessfully deployed against the Japanese navy in the Battle of Tsushima Strait in 1905 during the brief Russo-Japanese War. 5. See Malakhovskii (1983) for details of this historical incident. 6. Which followed the two centuries of deliberate isolation fostered during the Edo period (1663–1868). 7. See Hayward and Konishi (1999) for a discussion of the music culture of the Japanese community on Thursday Island in this period. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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Tori-shima, an uninhabited island 600 kilometres to the south of Tokyo, from which he sourced bird feathers and guano (for crop fertilizer). While these activities proved less economically viable than he had hoped, the project whetted his interest in developing other uninhabited islands as economic annexes to Hachijo and in the late 1890s he turned his attention to Minami Daito. After surveying the island, he landed 22 men there in 1900 to begin clearing vegetation in order to trial sugarcane production. Initial planting and growth rates for the cane were sufficiently encouraging for the mass planting of areas of the interior (Higashi 2009). Over the following three decades, infrastructure was established in the forms of workers’ and supervisors’ houses; a refinery to produce granulated brown sugar; and a narrow-gauge railway to transport cut sugarcane to the refinery and processed sugar to ships moored off the island’s jagged and precipitous coast. The development of this infrastructure introduced a more permanent aspect to the Hachijoan settlements as staff brought family members over and raised the first generation of local-born Hachijoan offspring. As the cane cultivation and processing industry expanded, the owners sought low-cost manual labour from Okinawa, the nearest area with a sizeable population. Initially Okinawans were brought in on short-term contracts, characterized by low wages and poor conditions (in a similar, albeit more short-term, manner to the indentured Melanesian workforce recruited and/or coerced into working the Queensland and northern New South Wales canefields in the late 1800s). By the 1910s, temporary Okinawan migrant workers were augmented by other Okinawans who came to reside on longer-term bases, some of whom brought families and became the first generation of Okinawan residents. In socio-economic terms, the whole of the island remained a ‘company town’ with all businesses and services owned and operated by Hachijo migrants (Nakai 2009). This structure resulted in a particular ‘stable but dynamic’ linguistic regime with regard to who spoke which language and to whom. At the time of Minami Daito’s initial settlement, the linguistic situation in Japan was in flux. Until the late 1800s, Japan was a linguistically diverse nation. Languages and dialects from one area of the country were often unintelligible to speakers from another. The language(s) spoken in the south of Ryukyu, for instance, were unintelligible to Japanese speakers from main island Japan. From the 1870s onwards the Meiji Government introduced a number of policies aimed at national cohesion. One of these, the introduction of compulsory school education delivered in standard Japanese, resulted in a major homogenization of language use. As a result, all but the older generation of Hachijoan migrants who relocated to Minami Daito in the 1910s and 1920s had the ability to speak both standard Japanese and their particular dialect (with its distinctly complex gram-

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Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 13 mar forms). But, despite their access to a newly standardized Japanese language, Hachijoan migrants retained their distinctive dialect well into their second generation (i.e. those born in the 1930s and 1940s) as their own ‘insider’ language, reinforcing their social cohesion and difference from their workforce. But, although the Hachijoan migrants occupied the dominant socio-economic positions on the island, the demographics of population in this small, closed society required Hachijoan settlers to also learn the language system of their workers. As a result, subsequent generations became socially bilingual, acquiring the Hachijoan dialect at home, and the Okinawan language of their employees in work and social situations. The latter aspect also had its complexities in that the Okinawan workers came from a variety of locations on Okinawa, and its smaller peripheral islands, all of which had distinct dialects, many of which were so significantly different from each other as to inhibit easy communication. As a result, the first generations of Okinawans adopted the standard southern Okinawan dialect, from around the capital Naha, as their lingua franca, despite the fact that all but the older members were also educated in standard Japanese (and thereby had another potential language to communicate with their Hachijoan bosses). The Hachijoan’s trilinguality (Hachijoan, Japanese, Okinawan) was matched by the Okinawans (with their local dialects of Okinawan, standard Okinawan and standard Japanese) but was not accompanied by the Okinawan workforce’s acquisition of Hachijoan. By the 1930s and 1940s a further linguistic development occurred in that the standard Japanese that became increasingly prominent on the island took the form of a variant similar to (but developed independently of) the so-called Uchinā-yamatu-guchi of main island Okinawa (Nakai, Long et al. 2003). Just as the Hachijoans and Okinawans retained their home languages in their new context, they also retained the cultural and performance customs of their home islands (Long 2009). Hachijoans (whose culture was closely akin to that of the main Japanese island of Honshu) continued to observe and perform one of the key Japanese seasonal festivals, the bon odori. Bon odori is a late summer festival that derives from Buddhist customs held to honour the dead. The bon odori dance is a key feature of the festival, usually performed by dancers ranged in circles around a wooden platform known as a yagura, and moving in clockwise and counter-clockwise fashion. There are a wide variety of bon odori styles of dancing and musical accompaniment across Japan (including the use of a variety of local music materials). Hachijoan bon odori dancing (like several other local variants) is habitually accompanied by large drums (known as taiko). The equivalent Okinawan event is the eisa, also held as an ancestor celebration, usually in July, which often features the performance of traditional songs. The latter are accompanied by the three-stringed Okinawan banjo-like instrument known as the san-

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shin (which is related to but distinct from the shamisen of main island Japan), and drums of various sizes. While there are obvious affinities between the forms, they are significantly different in style and reflect the distinct nature of Japanese and Ryukyuan heritage. The performance of both on Minami Daito (to this day) is highly unusual in the Japanese context and serves as a marker of the island’s dual Ryukyuan/Japanese antecedence. In addition to exposure to and, to some extent sharing of, diverse public festivals, it would seem likely that both groups also retained a number of musical practices in their own family and social contexts, performing the traditional songs of their respective regions. While written and/or oral history accounts from the early twentieth century are scant, the latter hypothesis is supported by accounts of Okinawan family performances of traditional songs in the mid-1900s (see discussion below).

Post-war social organization and cultural production Along with the upheaval of the World War II years in Japan, the most decisive impact on Minami Daito was that delivered by the US occupation of the Ryukyu Islands in 1945 and the region’s subsequent administration by a US civilian body between 1952 and 1972 (under Article 2 of the Treaty of San Francisco8). During the early-middle part of this period, in particular, transport, trade and general communications between Ryukyu and the remainder of Japan substantially diminished, effectively isolating Minami Daito’s Hachijoan community from their home island. In the 1950s the American administration introduced a variety of social, economic and legal reforms intended to democratize and modernize the socio-economic basis of the region so as to align it to US/Western values and strategic interests. While no substantial garrison was ever stationed on Minami Daito, the major impact of US administration was the deconstruction of the ‘company town’ basis of land ownership and economic structure in favour of one where residents had access to home and land ownership and the right to operate businesses of various kinds. This effectively acted as a ‘circuit breaker’ on the Hachijoan domination of the majority Okinawan population and precipitated a major

8. Article 3 specified: ‘Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system, with the United States as the sole administering authority, Nansei Shoto south of 29 degrees north latitude (including the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands), Nanpo Shoto south of Sofu Gan (including the Bonin Islands, Rosario Island and the Volcano Islands) and Parece Vela and Marcus Island. Pending the making of such a proposal and affirmative action thereon, the United States will have the right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands, including their territorial waters.’ © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 15 change in the power relationship between them and a concomitant modification of the complementary schismogenesis between them. The resultant restructuring of the local sugar industry at a time when Ryukyuans had little access to the main Japanese market caused an economic downturn in Minami Daito that did not significantly improve until the 1960s when trade relations with the Japanese main islands increased in the run-up to the reversion of Ryukyu to Japan in 1972. As a result of the de-emphasis of Hachijoan dominance in the post-war decades (and the lack of refreshment of Hachijoan society on the island by contact with and exchange between the island community and Hachijo itself) the island’s socio-linguistic structure changed, narrowing to a single, homogeneous, locally-developed language variety used by both Okinawan and Hachijoan descendents (Long 2004). This was basically the Okinawan version of standard Japanese (Uchinā-yamatu-guchi) but with an overlay of Hachijoan lexemes9 (Nakai, Long et al. 2003). This linguistic consolidation reflected the extent to which both populations adjusted to the realigned power relationships between them without pronounced acts and/or processes of retribution on the part of Okinawan islanders and without significant ‘rearguard’ resistance and/or return migration to their ancestral home island on the part of the Hachijoans. The local sugar industry revived during the post-Reversion period, and the island’s Okinawan population that, by this stage, included a third island-born generation, was swelled by fresh migrants (including a number from Miyako island, to the south of Okinawa). These migrants were incorporated into a (by now) wellestablished Minami Daitoan Okinawan society with a shared culture. But while the island’s Okinawan language had experienced an ‘organic’ localization, as a result of social contact factors, such tendencies were not apparent in other forms of local cultural activity. These occurred later and—somewhat paradoxically— resulted from the engagement of a number of cultural activists and local participants with the culture of Okinawa’s main island. Oral historical evidence gathered by the authors during research on the island in 2003–2011 indicates that while there is limited evidence of the performance of traditional Hachijoan repertoire on the island in the 1960s–1980s, the social performance of the Okinawan ‘folk song’ form known as shima uta (literally, ‘island songs’) was more common, at least in some families. This repertoire, accompanied by the sanshin together with occasional and/or impromptu percussion, is sung in a distinctive Ryukyuan pentatonic scale.10 Shima uta are regarded as heritage items whose authorship is usually unknown and whose form is largely

9. A lexeme is a linguistic stem unit. 10. With some regional variations. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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retained without significant lyrical or musical variation by performers who traditionally learned the material in social contexts and/or through the tutelage of respected musical teachers. Songs range in content from plaintive ballads to witty and often comic material (also performed in a duet form known as uta ashibi) and up-tempo (and highly ‘danceable’) numbers. The revival of interest in/popularity of shima uta in Okinawa in the 1970s and 1980s manifested itself in Minami Daito through a renewed interest in the form on the part of young people for whom established local family/social practices were reinforced/‘validated’ by popular interest in the form on the Okinawan main island.

Norio Shingaki and Borodino Musume During the 1970s and 1980s there was some informal teaching of sanshin playing and song repertoire within the island community but it was with the arrival of a new Okinawan migrant, Norio Shingaki, in 1987, that the island found its first formal teacher. Shingaki was well-acquainted with the revival of traditional Okinawan culture at the time of his arrival. Born on Kume island in 1935, Shingaki became involved in shima uta performance as a result of his participation in the revival of the traditional form of (musically accompanied) traditional Okinawan drama known as kumiodori. Kumiodori theatre involves performances of ancient Ryukyu legends by male actors intoning stanzas written in archaic Ryukyuan language in rhythmic patterns to sanshin accompaniment. The form was comprehensively revived in the 1950s and became so well-established and revered that it was successfully nominated for inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, achieving this in 2010.11 Arriving on the island to work for a local company, Shingaki was soon approached by island families who were aware of his cultural experience and was asked to teach shima uta to adult and juvenile performers. While Shingaki primarily considers himself an actor rather than a musician,12 he soon acquired a regular stable of pupils and, after retiring from his day-job in the early 2000s, developed a teaching and rehearsal facility which now includes a performance space and instrument bank (see Figures 2 and 3). Describing himself as an ‘old school’ educator (interview with the authors, March 9, 2011), Shingaki aims to combine high standards of instrumental and vocal development with a respect for the cultural value of the form and a sense of strong individual discipline in 11. See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00011&RL=00405. 12. The short bibliography he includes on his 2002 album, for example, gives the names of no less than six theatre companies in which he has performed as a member over the years, but the only information he includes about this musical background is that he obtained his teaching license from the Ryukyu Min'yō Association in 1979. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 17 practice, performance and presentation. To date, the majority of his pupils have been female elementary or junior high school pupils13 who have learned the style before departing to Okinawa to continue their studies at senior high school (education on the island being limited to the former levels).

Figure 2: Female students at the Shingaki studio (photo Daniel Long, March 2011)

Figure 3: Female students practising with Shingaki14 (photo Daniel Long, March 2011)

13. Attracted in part by the high profile of female shima uta singers and female shima uta ensembles such as Nenes over the last two decades. 14. In the photograph, several things are worth noting: the guitar-style machine heads on the sanshin making them easier to tune for young learners than traditional tuning pegs; the shime© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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In 2002, Shingaki released an album, entitled Tukkui-gwa: geinō seikatsu 45 shūnen, which showcased his signature piece Tokkui-gua (‘Small Sake Cup’), an elevenminute comedy sketch framed by a song, performed with his daughter Shizuko. He used this album as an opportunity to record three songs by two of his female students (Azusa Miyahira and Mari Nomura, still in junior high and elementary school, respectively, at the time). Most of the selections have no salient references to Minami Daito but one song, Ojare Ufuagari-jima (‘Welcome, Daito-jima’) although not penned by Minami Daito islanders does contain specific references to the island. It was written by two figures of some prominence in the Okinawan music scene, with music by Minoru Kinjō and lyrics by ‘Bisekatsu’ (the nom de plume of Zenshō Bise, founder of Campus Records). The title is significant for its combination of the Hachijoan word for welcome (a different conjugation from ojariyare mentioned elsewhere in this article) and the Okinawa language word for Minami Daito. On Bisekatsu’s blog his entry for January 31, 2001 records that Kinjō came into his shop with the news that Shingaki wanted them to write a song for two highly talented girl students. Bisekatsu records that he asked Kinjō to wait and 30 minutes later handed him the finished lyrics. A further entry records that Kinjō called to say the melody was finished (Bise 2001). Also appearing on the album was former Shingaki student and Minami Daito native Mika Uchizato, who at 22 had already won several honours. (See below for discussion of her solo albums.) Realizing the quality of performers he had trained in the early 2000s, Shingaki encouraged four of the most proficient (including performers of both Okinawan and Hachijoan descent) to collaborate under the name Borodino Musume (‘Borodino Young Girls’).15 The ensemble were well-received on the main island of Okinawa, with many shima uta aficionados perceiving them to have technical abilities, collective cohesion and cultural sensitivities superior to that of similar Okinawanbased young female ensembles of the time (such as the ‘New Nenes’ launched in 1999).16 Reflecting this, the ensemble won the new artist category in the 2003 daiko (left) and hira-daiko (right) drums at the back; the multiple trophies prominently displayed; and the girl at the right playing samba (a castanet-like instrument) in the left photo. 15. The line-up of Borodino Musume has changed over time. As mentioned, the lack of a senior high school on Minami Daito means girls must leave the island to further their studies. The first album features five members: Azusa Miyahira (the oldest at 18), Misako Yamauchi (15), Mari Nomura (14), Marina Tamamura (10) and Yurina Gima (10). The 2007 album jacket photo shows seven members. The 2009 album lists the group members’ names and instruments as Misuzu Okiyama (samba), Maki Miyahira (sanshin), Marina Tamamura (bongo drum), Mina Tamamura, Mizuki Seragaki (guitar) and Saori Nogo (sanshin). 16. Prominent Okinawan shima uta performer and respected youth-orientated anti-crime campaigner Kenji Asato (proprietor of the Naha min'yō dinner club Masakaya), for example, singled out their sense of collective cohesion and work ethic as an example for young Okinawan performers to follow (interview with the authors, March 10, 2011). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 19 Ryukyu Min'yō Kyoukai (Ryukyu Folk Song Association) competition, an award that brought considerable pride to the island as (arguably) the first Okinawan cultural acknowledgement of Minami Daito’s Okinawan community (let alone its accomplishments). In 2004 the ensemble won the grand prize in the 15th New Song Contest hosted by Radio Okinawa for the song Yume wa Ōkiku min'yō kashu (‘Aspiring to Be a Folk Music Singer’) written by Yoshimi Shingaki, son of Norio. However, neither the song nor the group strived for local island identification at this point. With regard to the above, it is worth emphasizing just how widespread local identification is within the world of Okinawan music, and not just with traditional performers. Even in the case of pop groups that incorporate almost no musical or lyrical hints of their Okinawan roots in their music (such as the bands HY, D-51 or Orange Range), it is difficult to find biographical information about members which does not include specific reference to which city, town or village within Okinawa they come from. This being the norm, it is even more striking that although internet searches for biographical information on Yoshimi Shingaki revealed what musical mentors he had studied under, what prizes he had won, etc., none listed his Minami Daito roots. With this in mind, the lack of local elements in the song Yume wa Ōkiku should not come as a surprise. In 2005, Yume wa Ōkiku became the title song of the group’s debut CD. Although the group included ‘Borodino’ in their name, as a local moniker for Minami Daito, this term was largely unfamiliar to most people on the main island of Okinawa and did not suggest their point of origin. The album packaging did nothing to signify their origins in a distinct locale either. Both front and back covers (see Figure 4) showed the band in standard Okinawan performance garb. Indeed this lack of individuation from Okinawan homeland styles was, in many ways, the essence of the ensemble’s style and appeal (at least, up to this point).

Figure 4: Front and back covers of Borodino Museme’s first album (2005) © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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Despite the above, there were traces of local identification in some songs on the album. Track 2, Furusato Ondo (‘Hometown Song’), written by Norio Shingaki, starts each of its five verses with phrases like ‘On Daito…’ while Track 4, Machiri Gutu (‘Festival Things’), with lyrics by Minami Daito islander Akemi Uchizato and melody by Yoshimi Shingaki, mentions the local taiko drum (Daito tēku), as well as the local Shinto shrine.17 Both this style of drum and Shinto shrines are cultural elements not found in Okinawa; and are present only on Minami Daito because of its Hachijoan roots.18 However, the lines that contain these uniquely Minami Daitoan cultural elements are not in mainland Japanese language but in Okinawan dialect. The melody of the song is typically Okinawan as well, and would be immediately recognizable as such to even the untrained Japanese ear. While the ensemble’s second release, an EP entitled Nangoku Yume no Shima (‘The Southern Island of Dreams’), contained minimal address to local themes, these came into full focus on their third CD, Ojariyare (2009), which is discussed at the end of the following section.

Yasuyuki Hamazato and locally-themed songs In parallel with Borodino Musmume’s rise to prominence and the release of their debut CD, another island performer, Yasuyuki Hamazato, pursued a different project. Born on the island in 1959, Hamazato is a first-generation Minami Daitoan Okinawan whose father arrived on the island as a child in 1950, migrating from Izena (30 km west of Okinawa’s main island) with his family. Hamazato grew up listening to his father perform a wide variety of songs, including classic shima uta, and learned the sanshin from him at an early age. Hamazato has recalled that, during his youth, musical entertainment was limited to social performance or playing recorded music, since Japanese (including Okinawan) radio stations did not broadcast at sufficient strength to reach Minami Daito in a dependable manner.19 In an interview with the authors in March 8, 2011 he recalled that the repertoire played on the island in the 1960s and 1970s was primarily Okinawan, although some popular Japanese songs were also featured. In 1982 he wrote what appears to have been Minami Daito’s first locally-themed song, entitled Daito Ammaku, for his ‘own amusement’, which later became a staple of his repertoire

17. Which—paradoxically—has an Okinawan name, ufu gami sama. 18. The culture of the main islands of Japan is often referred to as Yamatu culture in Okinawa, to contrast it with Ryukyuan or Okinawan culture. While Hachijo is an island located almost 300 km from Honshū island in central Japan, which means that some aspects of its culture (particularly its dialect) differ significantly from the mainland, Hachijo has far more in common with mainland Japan than with Okinawa. As a result, from the standpoint of Minami Daito, Hachijo’s cultural influences can be seen as ‘mainland Japan’ traits. 19. Hamazato does recall, however, that Chinese radio signals could occasionally be heard. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 21 (see below). He recalls being motivated to write further original song material about Minami Daito while working in Naha (the capital of Okinawa prefecture) in the early to mid 1980s. In discussion with the authors, he identified a sense of inadequacy and embarrassment about the lack of cultural repertoire from his own island (particularly given the volume and diversity of Ryukyuan shima uta) and he began writing more material soon after his return to Minami Daito, composing songs in the style of the shima uta repertoire that he had learned from his family. The first recordings of his compositions occurred in 1999 on the first commercially released album by a local artist, Mika Uchizato, a singer and sanshin player who had trained with Shingaki. Entitled Tabidachi (‘Leaving on a Journey’), the album was recorded in Okinawa with financial support from her parents to commemorate her graduation from high school. The tracks are in orthodox shima uta style, with ornate vocal melodies and sanshin accompaniment, reflecting Shingaki’s project of promoting the performance of classic shima uta among young musicians. Unlike the packaging of the first Borodino Musume album, the CD had a clear local orientation by dint of its cover art, which consists of a photo of the artist playing a sanshin superimposed over an aerial photo of the island’s fishing port. Of the nine songs included on the album (3 of the 12 tracks being alternative karaoke versions), four were locally written, two by Hamazato, one by Shingaki and one by the singer’s mother, Akemi Uchizato. Both of Shingaki’s (Japanese language) compositions, Furusato Ondo (‘Hometown Song’) and Uchizato’s Tuke fijami bushi (‘Over the Sea’) are somewhat generalistic shima uta, in that they refer to islanders’ perceptions of island life but both also have some specifically local references. Shingaki’s song, for instance, opens each verse with a reference to an aspect of Minami Daito, while Uchizato’s composition makes specific mention of Minami Daito and its blooming flowers in its final verse. By contrast, the lyrics of Hamazato’s composition, Minami Daito Gyokō Ondo (‘Song for Minami Daito Fishing Port’), the theme of which is echoed on the CD’s cover (see Figure 5), are intensely local. Minami Daito Gyokō Ondo is distinctly unusual within Okinawan song culture. While Okinawan songs routinely identify and (usually) valorize aspects of the prefecture (and/or, implicitly, its former autonomous status20) few make connections between the local and national identity, let alone valorize the latter.21 Delivered in standard Japanese (with occasional Okinawan vocable interjections, such as

20. Until 1609 Ryukyu was an independent kingdom. Even after its invasion by Japan it maintained a significant degree of autonomy that was finally removed by the Meiji government in 1872, which integrated the region into the newly reconfigured Japanese nation-state. 21. And those that do refer to the nation as Yamatu (to indicate their difference from it) whereas Hamazato’s song explicitly acknowledges and expresses affinity to Nippon (i.e. Japan by it usual name). © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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yuiyasa yuisa), Hamazato’s song celebrates the construction of Minami Daito’s (first-ever) commercial fishing port facility, which opened in August 2000. Prior to its construction, the few fishing boats that operated from the island had to be hoisted by crane over the ragged limestone shore, impeding the development of both subsistence and commercial fishing. The song praises the construction of the port by Japanese engineers and the vision behind the investment that promised to deliver substantial economic benefits to the island. Within this celebratory context, the lyrical protagonist identifies as Japanese and affirms the nation’s support for infrastructural development. While no doubt sincere, the lyrical orientation of the song also mirrors its particular moment of composition, as none of the songwriter’s other songs have such a nationalistic emphasis (and, indeed, as the port has failed to deliver the fishing bonanza that was hoped).

Figure 5: Front cover of Mika Uchizato’s Tabidachi CD (1999) showing the island’s port facility

In terms of local inflection, Hamazato’s other composition Abayōi (which is not featured on his subsequent solo album but was later included on Borodino Musume’s album Ojariyare) is most notable, mixing cultural features in something that could only have been written by a Minami Daitoan. Abayōi (meaning goodbye) is a word from Hachijoan dialect used commonly on Minami Daito, but the © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 23 melody, accompaniment (sanshin) and arrangement (with flute) are all unmistakably Okinawan. The lyrics are almost completely in the Okinawa language but the first word out of the singer’s mouth is Hachijoan dialect. In the opening phrase, ‘chonkomē nu tuchi kara’ (‘from the time I was a child’), the initial word is one that is popular on the home island of Hachijo as well. The literal meaning of chonkomē is ‘calf’, but the term is used by extension to refer to humans (think of similar English uses of ‘filly’ or ‘kitten’). Other Hachijoan terms featured in the song include magama (sickle, scythe), kaiba (hay for animal feed) and yama. The latter is particularly notable, encapsulating a particular migrant perception. On Minami Daito yama does not mean ‘mountain’ (as in usual Japanese usage) but, rather, ‘cane field’. Japanese language varieties (including Okinawan varieties) show an enormous breadth of variation in word form and meaning but yama is one of those rare words for which one finds almost no variation. For this reason, it is even more surprising for people coming to Minami Daito to find that yama does not refer to land of high elevation on the island but rather to the lowest areas (see cross-section in Figure 1). But one must remember that this counter-intuitive term was born on Hachijo. On that island, with its drastically different topography, the term was less strange because since time immemorial villages have been located on low-lying coastal lands while fields tend to be up higher, as terraced patches on mountain sides. Thus, in the dialect and culture of (one of) Minami Daito’s ‘mother islands’, yama meaning ‘field’ often refers to the same place as yama meaning ‘mountain’. Hamazato is now a popular social performer on Minami Daito, singing a variety of material, including shima uta and popular regional songs22 along with his own material. He recalls that the latter attracted increased attention and interest in the late 1990s and 2000s, prompting him to record and release his first compilation of songs in 2001, entitled Hyaku-nen no Yume, Hama-chan Shima Uta (‘The Hundred Year Dream: Island Songs of Hama-chan’) (see Figure 6). The title refers to duration of the current population’s residence on the island and is combined with a colloquial reference to ‘Hama chan’, the first part being a diminutive form of the singer’s forename and the latter being a term of familiarity and friendship. The album is largely comprised of vocal and sanshin numbers with occasional lowprofile textural beds and instrumental embellishments. Hamazato’s vocal style is relaxed and ‘untutored’, with a preference for fluid delivery of the lyrics rather than pronounced melodic ornamentation, and his sanshin style has a rhythmic ‘bounce’ suited to the mid-tempos of the majority of the tracks (and, in these regards, his vocal and instrumental performances have a convivial, rustic flavour appropriate to his designation of the album as being presented by ‘Hama-chan’). 22. Such as Okinawan shima uta/rock fusionist Shōkichi Kina’s Subete no Hito no Kokoro ni Hana o and the theme song from Nobuhiro Doi’s 2006 film Nada Sōsō. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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Figure 6: Front cover of Hyaku-nen no Yume, Hama-chan Shima Uta by Yasuyuki Hamazato (2001)

The album comprises 15 original compositions, nine of which have Okinawan language lyrics. The recording was produced in Okinawa City (formerly known as Koza) in 2001 and was facilitated by Campus Records. Hamazato ‘underwrote’ the production by advance purchasing 1000 copies to sell on the island and distribute to family and friends, with further copies being retailed on Okinawa Island by the company. The CD cover is an illustration of the singer posed against waves breaking on the island’s limestone shore—an image immediately identifiable to Minami Daitoans as ‘home’ but more ambiguous in its association to Okinawan and Japanese consumers. The CD booklet specifies socio-cultural fusion (Bateson’s fourth outcome of complementary schismogenesis) as key to Minami Daitoan identity, stating (in translation) ‘it has just the right blend of Edo [i.e. mainland Japanese] and Okinawan culture’). Significantly, for the internally integrationist nature of his creative project, Hamazato frames his introductory CD liner notes with the words haisai and ojariyare. The former is a greeting readily recognizable to many main island Japanese devotees of Okinawa and is universally known throughout Okinawa prefecture as a result of the popularity of Shoukichi Kina’s song Haisai Ojisan © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 25 (1976). Ojariyare is a decidedly un-Okinawan word, being a Hachijo expression meaning ‘welcome’. In other contexts Hamazato has expressed the integrationism of his work and of Minami Daito culture in terms of its being champūru, ‘mixed’. This term, derived from a distinctive Okinawan stew-like dish in which various elements can be inserted, is noteworthy since it has often been used to characterize the nature of (central) Okinawan culture and its modern music in particular (see Hosokawa 1999, for a discussion of the latter). Hamazato’s choice of the term to describe Minami Daito’s own ‘stew’ of Okinawan and non-Okinawan elements localizes and further extends and elaborates the use of the term. In an interview with the authors in 2011, Hamazato identified Daito Ammaku, his first composition, as one of his most requested songs. The term ammaku refers to the island’s resident coconut crab and is used colloquially to describe a resident who ‘clings’ to Minami Daito (i.e. one with a lasting commitment to it).23 As he described, when Daitoan friends met in Naha in the 1980s they would often ask each other, ‘are you still a “Daito Ammaku”?’ (Meaning, ‘are you still committed to/returning to Minami Daito?’). The lyrics to this song are unmistakably ‘local’, starting with an explanation that the island was originally uninhabited.24 The lyrics mention Tamaoki recruiting settlers, and refer to the kaitaku seishin (‘pioneer spirit’) being passed from generation to generation. Once again, the fact that this term is usually heard in Japanese only, in reference to migration to ‘new regions’ such as Hokkaido or to countries such as the United States and Australia, shows how unique the song sounds in the Okinawan language. Each of the six verses closes with the innately Okinawan phrase washita daitonchu. The denotation is simply ‘us Daitoans’, but the word for ‘us’ (washita) is Okinawan, as is the demonym suffix ‘-n-chu’. The linguistic distance between this phrase and its standard Japanese counterpart watashi-tachi daito-jin is considerable. Another of his popular songs is the (quasi anthemic) Borojino Airando (‘Borodino Island’). The song has particular significance in terms of the integration of Okinawan and Hachijoan culture on the island in that it has been adopted to accompany bon odori dancing despite being an Okinawan language composition (illustrating the manner in which bon dori itself has been ‘naturalized’ as part of Minami Daitoan culture, despite its continued absence from any other area of Okinawa prefecture). This integration is shown in the lyrics as well, with lines that 23. It is worth pointing out an interesting, but strictly coincidental, terminological similarity with the Bonin Islands. There the English word ‘rock crab’ is used to describe islanders who are loathe to leave their island for any length of time, i.e. to clinging to a big rock (their island) in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 24. This fact in itself sets Minami Daito (and it sister island, Kita Daito, to the north) apart from the other forty-seven islands of Okinawa prefecture, which have been inhabited since time immemorial. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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translate as ‘Yamato culture, island culture, we’ll show you both at once’. (Yamato is the term used to refer to main island Japan in order to distinguish it from the Ryukyuan or Okinawan culture.) The Hachijo phrase ojariyare is used again in this song, along with common Okinawan language phrases such as chura-shima (‘beautiful island’). To make sure the listener understands which prefecture the island mentioned in the song belongs to, the lyric also includes the line (in translation) ‘Okinawa has a lot of islands, but Borodino is God’s island’. Affection for the island is shown in the pun ai, ai, airando, meaning ‘love, love, island’, and recalling the ‘pioneer spirit’ mentioned above, this song talks of islanders’ ‘frontier spirits’ (using these words as loanwords). While several of Hamazato’s songs mention Hachijoan cultural icons such as Tamaoki, the greeting ojariyare, Hachijoan styles of drum or sumo wrestling, his composition Daito Shome Bushi is distinct by virtue of paying homage to the most famous traditional Hachijoan folk song. The precise meaning of some of Shome Bushi’s many verses have been lost to the ages, and there are various etymologies put forth for shome (bushi simply means song), including shio-me (a line where two ocean currents meet). Another etymology espoused in this song is that shome comes from shio-ume (salt-cured plums). The lyrics to this song are more cryptic or telegraphic (i.e. less wordy) than Hamazato’s other compositions, as the style of the referent folk song prescribes, but the general tenor of the lyrics is the same as most of the other songs on the album, extolling the virtues of life on the island. Counting songs (kazoe-uta) are an integral part of the Okinawan song tradition. Hamazato’s Daito Kazoe-uta is one of the songs on the album that explicitly includes the island’s name in the title and each of the ten stanzas begin with a number that is followed by a semi-homonymous phrase, creating a pun-like word play. The stanzas tell the story of a young person’s trepidation about migrating to Minami Daito, a place so different from home that he worries that even the local god will not be able to understand him. Unlike the rest of Okinawa (which has a religious tradition uniquely its own), Daito has only a mainland god, housed in a Japanese Shinto shrine. The first stanza declares: Hito-tsu (one)/ hito-bito chichimisori, kuchi nu kuruma ni noshiratti (‘I didn’t listen to what people said; I was taken in by what I heard and set off for an island that even birds don’t migrate to’). Stanzas 2–5 continue to stress the isolation and alienation (compared to home in Okinawa) until stanza 6 changes the tone, declaring: Mukashi to uchikawati Daito nu shima ya takara-jima (‘Unlike the old days, Daito is a now a ‘treasure island’). By stanza 8 he is sending money to his family, and by stanza 9 is talking of moving them to Minami Daito to be with him. His transformation is complete by stanza 10: tō-de; tō-tō ammaku nati, daini no furusato, daito-jima, shison hanjō iya sakai urishisanu (‘At long last I have become an ammaku, this is my adopted

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 27 home, my progeny will prosper and be happy [here’]). The significance of this last verse cannot be overemphasized, because one important aspect of Minami Daito life is that most of the people who initially came to live on it saw themselves as being there only temporarily in order to make some money and return home. This was not so true of Hachijo islanders (who arrived first, oversaw the island’s transformation from an untouched wilderness to an agribusiness economy and thus controlled much of its wealth) but the tendency was clear in Okinawan migrants. Although the island has been populated for over a century, most graves are from the past few decades; the first generations of migrants did not want to have their grave on an island in the middle of nowhere, especially when it was unclear whether their descendents would even remain there. Knowing this historical background makes the protagonist’s decision to put down his roots on the island even more meaningful. One of the most problematic aspects of cultural heritage on Minami Daito is its train system. The first rail lines were constructed in 1902, allowing handjacked carriages of cane to be moved from the fields to processing facilities. In 1917 the rail service was substantially upgraded and steam engines began to operate until US bombers crippled the system in 1944. The system was reconstructed in 1950 and operated until 1983, when it was finally replaced by trucks. Historical memory of the railways is complex. For older Okinawan islanders in particular, the railways (of the pre-war period) symbolize the harshest aspects of Hachijoan exploitation of Okinawan workers; an aspect of the island’s recent past that many older islanders are reluctant to express (however greatly it looms within social memory). This problematic past has been identified by Hamazato as one reason why he has largely avoided historical topics in his songwriting: ‘the past is too complex … islanders don’t imagine themselves as having a shared past, so any historical interpretation might divide the audience’ (interview with the authors, March 8, 2011). Yet the presence of train tracks and old engines on the island provides a vivid material reminder of that past. It also has another aspect, apparent to many islanders, namely its potential as a heritage asset for tourism. Train aficionados in Japan are numerous and spend a lot of money on travel and train-related souvenirs, and it is telling that of the few books written about Minami Daito two are entirely devoted to railway photos.25 Notwith-

25. In the interest of information dissemination, we list here the only other five books we have been able to find about the island: Takeuchi (2002), 110 pages of colour and b/w photos of trains and grass-covered tracks; Iwahori (2005), 60 pages of train-related photos, which incidentally is from a publisher specializing in train books; Ōsawa and Ōsawa (1997), a 64-page colour photo booklet about the nature of the island; Okudo (2000), over twice that length and packed with colour nature photos; and Ōtomo (2011) an 88-page photo book. When one of the authors © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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standing this—and many islanders’ desire to increase tourism—development of this asset remains minimal. Despite his stated reluctance to address historical contexts, Hamazato’s debut album included Kisha Poppo (literally, ‘train, puff, puff’), a Japanese language song that acknowledged the rail system as one of the island’s best-known features. Set to a brisk mid-tempo rhythm, with the sanshin ‘riffs’ backed by strummed acoustic guitar and percussion, the song is in standard Japanese, distancing it from his core Okinawan language repertoire and making it accessible to a broad external audience. In addition, the song’s use of onomatopoeia gives it the feel of a children’s song, rather than one that might be perceived to reignite resentment over the troubled island past that is elided by his lyrics. Emphasizing the lingering presence of the rail system in local consciousness, the topic was also addressed in a second song, Shima nu kikansha (‘The Island Locomotive song’) written by Akemi Uchizato and recorded on her daughter Mika’s third CD, Kaze no Shonkane (2004). Sung to a sanshin accompaniment, the arrangement features fansō (sideblown flute) parts to provide wistful colouration and a triangle whose rhythms suggest the motion of the trains. Similarly avoiding any reference to problematic aspects of island history, Uchizato’s song renders history in ‘soft focus’, imbuing it with nostalgia for youthful experiences, ably illustrated by the following lines (in translation): Even if it is rainy and windy, the train goes round and round the island Carrying the dreams of boys who aspire to be engineers Young girls’ feelings are carried by the sugar syrup wind Words of love exchanged are still in their hearts

Hamazato’s songs gained further exposure on the island, and in Okinawa more generally, through the inclusion of six of his compositions on Borodino Musume’s third album, Ojariyare, Minami Daito, Shima uta meguri (‘Welcome, A Tour of Minami Daito Island Songs’) (2009). The CD’s title signalled an embrace of Minami Daitoan identity that was complemented by the aerial view and superimposed group shot featured on its front cover (reproduced in Figure 7). The local shima uta in question comprised Hamazato’s songs Oyajiyare, Borodino Island, Kisha Poppo, Daito Ammaku, Minami Daito Gyokō Ondo and Abayōi. The arrangements of these are uniformly medium tempo and feature enthusiastically melodic female voices sprinkling Hamazato’s material with liberal doses of Okinawan vocable interjections. In this context, the rehabilitation of the railway system becomes assembled papers for what would become the sixth Minami Daito book (Nakai, Higashi and Long 2009), the decision was made to commission a chapter about the island’s narrow rail train history there as well. These train-related books by outsiders stand in stark contrast to the dearth of nostalgia that many islanders express for their railway heritage. © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 29 even more marked, as the subject matter of Kisha Poppo provides the pretext for a cheerful, highly rhythmic guitar, sanshin and percussion ‘groove’ that is at marked odds to the historical perception of the early years of the sugar industry that are still shared by many older islanders.

Figure 7: Front cover of Borodino Musume’s album Ojariyare, Minami Daito, Shima uta meguri (2009)

Conclusion The problematic negotiation of the symbolism of the island’s rail relics in the songs discussed above points to the manner in which Minami Daito’s social and cultural integration of Hachijoan and Okinawan elements is still a project in progress. The last fifteen years have been marked by rapprochement and an inclusiveness that is particularly evident in the music culture discussed in this article. Yet, in an island in which its oldest inhabitants can remember the socio-economically divided and divisive plantation system of the pre-war years, integration and inclusion is still © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

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open to resistance and/or the tokenism of a ‘politically correct’ acceptance of a syncretic (Hachijoan-Okinawan) identity at the same time that personal preferences and family traditions serve to maintain a separation of families (and ‘bloodlines’). The musical interminglings outlined above have been one of the most significant cultural statements and manifestations of social reconciliation, and the development of a local song repertoire has, in particular, created a distinctly Minami Daitoan cultural identity through processes of cultural consolidation. Our analysis in this article has revealed that the interaction between two distinct ethnic groups on Minami Daito has tended towards what Bateman termed ‘complementary schismogenesis’. Outcomes of this tended towards what he identified as ‘stable but dynamic equilibrium’ in the early twentieth century, when the Hachijoan community was socio-economically dominant. Then, in the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as the Okinawan community came to achieve greater prominence, the tendency was towards Bateman’s fourth outcome, the fusion of two parties. Minami Daitoans first consolidated two distinct linguistic and later musical heritages to express their newly forming identity. Le Page’s ‘acts of identity’ framework (1985) can help us understand why Okinawan musical influences became dominant over those of Hachijo in the new musical mode islanders have created, despite the fact that the latter culture has been associated with higher socio-economic prestige. Le Page’s first and second conditions for a group to emulate were that it be identifiable, and that people have access to it. The case can easily be made that Okinawan music is far more identifiable as a distinct genre than that of Hachijoan, and that Daitoans certainly had more opportunity to hear and analyse (i.e. learn the techniques of) the latter. Le Page’s fourth condition, ‘the ability to modify one’s own behaviour’, emphasizes that people must not only be able to ‘hear’ and identify a style of music (or a way of speaking) as unique, but to able to identify exactly what makes it so in order to emulate it. The fact that Daitoans had access to teachers who could formally instruct them in Okinawan musical techniques (either on the island itself or on the main island of Okinawa) is key here. Finally, the ‘strong motivation’ to be associated with a particular group (Le Page’s third factor) may be related to the media recognition and commercial success that Okinawan music (and not Hachijoan music) has received for the past few decades. Minami Daito can be understood, in national terms, to have a double minority status (i.e. as a minority within a minority). Okinawan culture (its people, its language, etc.) has a minority status within Japan but Minami Daito’s many nonOkinawan (Hachijo) influences give it a closer affinity to main island Japanese culture and thus give it a minority status within Okinawa. Politically, it is part of Okinawa prefecture but most Okinawans know nothing of it. Illustrating the latter

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013.

Language, music and cultural consolidation on Minami Daito 31 point, during 100-year anniversary celebrations of the island in 2000, posters put up on the main island of Okinawa celebrated that anniversary with the simple functional statement that (in translation), ‘Minami Daito is part of Okinawa prefecture’. The Okinawan people are a minority within Japan, but one of their ways of coping with the disadvantages of their minority status has been their embrace of their history and cultural heritage. Minami Daito, with only one hundred years of human inhabitation, has had no such ancient heritage to readily embrace, but has begun to integrate the various cultural elements it inherited from Hachijo with those from various parts of Okinawa prefecture into a cultural champūru that is distinctly its own. While this may not have (yet) created a distinct ‘ethnicity’ for the island’s population, it is an indication of the processes that are actively at work in developing and articulating the island’s distinct social identity.

Bibliography Bateson, Gregory. 1935. ‘Culture Contact and Schismogenesis’. Man 35 (December): 178–​ 83. Reproduced in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, ed. Gregory Bateson, 64–71. New York: Chandler, 1972. ——1949. ‘Bali: The Value System of a Steady State, “Ethos” and “Schismogenesis”’. In Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed. Meyer Fortes, 35–53. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, 107–127. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Bise, Zenshō. 2001. ‘Chikuonki’ (phonograph), online at: http://www.campus-r.com/chikuonki01.html. Feld, Steven. 1994. ‘From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: Notes on the Discourses of World Music and World Beat’. In Music Grooves, ed. Steven Feld and Charles Keil, 257–89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hamazato, Yasuyuki. 2011. Interview with Philip Hayward and Daniel Long, March 8. Hayward, P., and J. Konishi. 1999. ‘“Mokuyo-to no ongaku”: The Music of the Japanese Community in the Torres Strait 1884–1941’. Perfect Beat: The Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture 5/3: 34–47. Higashi, Kazuaki. 2009. ‘The Origins, the Charm and the Future of Minami Daito Island’. In Minami Daito-jima no Hito to Shizen (‘The People and Nature of Minami Daito Island’), ed. Seiichi Nakai, Kazuaki Higashi and Daniel Long, 21–33. Kagoshima: Nampō Shinsha. Hosokawa, Shuhei. 1999. ‘Soy Sauce Music: Haruomi Hosono and Japanese Self-Orientalism’. In Widening the Horizon: Exoticism in Post-War Popular Music, ed. Philip Hayward, 114–44. Sydney: John Libbey and Co. Iwahori, Haruo. 2005. Minami Daito-jima: Iwahori Haru Shashinshū (‘Minami Daito-jima: Iwahori Haruo Photograph Collection’). Nishinomiya-shi: Nainen Shuppan. Kuwahara, Sueo, Takahiro Ozaki and Akira Nishimura. 2007. ‘Transperipheral Networks: Bullfighting and Cattle Culture in Japan’s Outer Islands’. Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 1/2: 1–13.

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Le Page, Robert B., and Andree Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Long, Daniel. 2004. ‘Airando hoppā to nihongo no gengo kōryū’ (‘Island Hoppers and Japanese Language Interaction’). In Nihonkai, Higashi Ajia no Chichūkai (‘Sea of Japan, the Mediterranean of Asia’), ed. Seiichi Nakai, Junzō Uchiyama and Kōji Takahashi, 237–​ 53. Toyama: Katsura Shobō. ——2009. ‘Minami Daito-jima kotoba ga tsukuriageru gengo keikan’ (‘The Linguistic Landscape Created by the Minami Daito Dialect’). In Minami Daito-jima no Hito to Shizen (‘The People and Nature of Minami Daito Island’), ed. Seiichi Nakai, Kazuaki Higashi and Daniel Long, 74–87. Kagoshima: Nampō Shinsha. Malakhovskii, K. V. 1983. ‘Russian Discoveries in the Pacific Ocean from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century’. Russian Studies in History 21/4: 27–46. http://dx.doi.org/​ 10.2753/RSH1061-1983210427 Nakai, Seiichi. 2009. ‘Shugā airando, minami daito no kaihatsu to keikan’ (‘Sugar Island, the Development and Landscape of Minami Daito’). In Minami Daito-jima no Hito to Shizen (‘The People and Nature of Minami Daito Island’), ed. Seiichi Nakai, Kazuaki Higashi and Daniel Long, 36–52. Kagoshima: Nampō Shinsha. Nakai, Seiichi, Kazuaki Higashi and Daniel Long, eds. 2009. Minami Daito-jima no Hito to Shizen (‘The People and Nature of Minami Daito Island’). Kagoshima: Nampo Shinsha. Nakai, Seiichi, Daniel Long, Naoyuki Hashimoto and Yoshiyuki Asahi. 2003. ‘Nan’yō purantēshon shakai ni okeru hōgen sesshoku’ (‘Dialect Contact in a South Seas Plantation Society: Based on Fieldwork from Minani Daito Island’). Chiiki Gengo 15: 51–60. Okudo, Haruo. 2000. Minami Daito-jima no Shizen (‘The Nature of Minami Daito Island’). Naha: Nirai-sha. Ōsawa, Yūshi, and Keiko Ōsawa. 1997. Minami Daito-jima Shizen gaido bukku (‘Minami Daito Island Nature Guidebook’). Naha: Borderink. Ōtomo, Masashi. 2011. Grace Islands—Minami Daito-jima, Kita Daito-jima. Tokyo: Kula. Poppi, Cesare. 1997. ‘Wider Horizons with Larger Details: Subjectivity, Ethnicity and Globalization’. In The Limits of Globalization: Cases and Arguments, ed. Alan Scott, 284–305. London: Routledge. Shingaki, Norio. 2011. Interview with Philip Hayward and Daniel Long, March 9. Takeuchi, Akira. 2002. Minami Daito Sugar Train: Minami no shima no chiisa na tetsudō. (‘The Little Railway on a Southern Island’). Tokyo: Iwasaki Digital Publishing.

Discography Borodino Musume (2005) Yume wa Ōkiku. Campus. ——(2007) Nangoku Yume no Shima. Campus. ——(2009) Ojariyare, Minami Daito, Shima uta meguri. Borodino. Hamazato, Yasuyuki (2001) Hyaku-nen no yume: Hama-chan no shima uta. Koza. Shingaki, Norio et al. (2002) Tukkui-gwa geinō seikatsu 45 shūnen. Campus. ——(2007) Tukkui-gwa to kodomo-tachi geinō seikatsu 50 shūnen. Campus. Uchizato, Mika (1999) Tabidachi. Nnarufon Records. ——(2004) Kaze no Shonkane. Campus. ——(2008) Akiramenaide (single). Campus.

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