Drumming Out a Message: Eisa and the Okinawan Diaspora (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Drumming Out a Message: Eisa and the Okinawan Diaspora Ricardo D. Trimillos (bio) Drumming Out a Message: Eisa and the Okinawan Diaspora. Directed by Yoshitaka Terada. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2005. One DVD, 75:40 minutes. DVD/NTSC format. The DVD is a 75-minute documentary by the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. It considers 25 years of identity building by Okinawans in the Osaka region of Japan, a nation where Okinawans are regarded both as a domestic Other and as non-Japanese. Eisa is an Okinawan music-dance folk form that features drumming and song accompanied by sanshin lute in choreographed mass formations of 30–100 participants. The video is less about the performance form, and more about the role of performance in the formation of a diasporic identity. It documents day-long Eisa Festivals held by the Banyan Association in the Taisho Ward of Osaka, presumably in 2000 and 2002. It intercuts performance footage and interviews, principally with Okinawan voices and a few with Japanese ones. It clearly articulates an Okinawan/Japanese divide of ethnicity and culture, in contrast to a general external view of Okinawa as part of Japan, given its present political status. Okinawa was a kingdom widely involved with maritime trade throughout Asia from the 11th century onward. It came under Japanese control in 1609, losing its sovereign status. During the 1946–1972 interregnum, U.S. occupation forces controlled the islands. In 1972, Okinawa was returned to Japan, becoming its southernmost prefecture. This commentary is colored by three personal factors: my experiences with and advocacy for Okinawan performance, culture, and identity in Hawai’i; the argument that Okinawan traditional culture is at least as much Southeast Asian as it is East Asian; and my personal view that the Ryukyus have strong historical and cultural links to the northern Philippines. Although the focus of this film is on the social tensions between Okinawans and Japanese, the issues and observations presented resonate with many minority/ majority dyads, including Hawaiian/haole (white), Maori/pakeha (white), and Irish/English. There is a kind of universality in the tropes which most diasporic groups in a nonwar context can relate to. In particular, the film identifies difficulties of Okinawans living in a Japanese space, especially those of the nisei second generation born in Japan. Loss of heritage language, erasure of homeland [End Page 161] culture, conflicts of mixed ethnicity, and issues of acceptance by the societies of heritage and of birth are major concerns. Drumming departs from most documentaries in that there is no disembodied hegemonic voice providing narration or analysis. Rather, the topic for each section is presented in print title, with content presented via interview excerpts with full English translation in subtitle. Thus, voices are exclusively those of participants, although the gaze of the non-Okinawan filmmaker inevitably manifests itself. The video has five sections: “In the Beginning,” “In the Eyes of the Japanese,” “The Second Generation,” “Yamatonchu (the Japanese),” and “Umui (Emotions and Desires).” Opening with a performance by the Banyan (Gaijimaru) Association ensemble, the background of Okinawan labor immigration and social clubs for workers in the 1950s is presented in subtitle. Although scattered throughout the Kansai (southern) region of Honshu Island, émigrés eventually coalesced around eisa performance, originally part of Okinawan O-Bon observance—a Buddhist veneration of departed spirits, usually performed in August. “In the Beginning” refers to the founding of the Banyan Association in 1975, motivated by concerns for workers’ rights and by nostalgia for a homeland identity. The video foregrounds founding member Toshinori Tamaki as speaker and as performer. Other members describe their connections with Okinawan-ness through eisa, seeing it as a means for presenting an Okinawan Self to the Japanese Other. Themes of marginalization and assimilation are not just about Okinawan culture in Japan, but also about integrating cultures of Okinawan “outliers” such as Yaeyama and Miyako islands into a diasporic, Osaka-constructed, pan-Okinawan unitary. Although not extensively problematized, members point out that eisa is not originally a Ryukyu-wide genre. Nevertheless, the Osaka project attempts representation of the entire archipelago within the rubric of the Eisa Festival. One musician states there was no eisa in...