Author(s): Ayano Ginoza
Affiliation:
Publication Year: 2022
Keywords:
Abstract
This essay builds a discussion of an Okinawan women’s contemporary feminist movement working on decolonization scholarship through a particular focus on islands and resilience. In doing so, I engage with Keiko Katsukata-Inafuku’s seminal essay titled “Creating an Okinawan Women’s Studies: Confronting Colonial Modernity with the Agency of ‘Unaiism’” (2016) to explicate the significance of her analysis of the festival while identifying where the focus of resilience and islands may add to the discussion. I argue that juxtapositions of islands and resilience offer a generative configuration of islands and islanders’ agencies, not as static, small, distant, backwards, and underdeveloped. I first return to the linkage of islands and feminism to show how the Unai Festival presented island feminist relationalities by convening women’s issues brought together in reconsideration of women’s epistemologies in Okinawa. Then I examine how proceedings of the first Unai Festival demonstrate the diversity of gendered experiences in Okinawa, which in turn constitutes a form of feminist resilience in solidarity with women on the islands of Okinawa and beyond.