[KineJapan] Call for papers: Special Section on Okinawan Images in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema

[Michael Raine]

Call for Papers: a Special Section on Okinawan Images in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Spring Issue 2021

Postwar Okinawa in In/Visibility—Realigning Cinematic Images, Histories, and Archives

Almost half a century since its reversion from America’s military rule to the Japanese state in 1972, Okinawa still embraces profound political-historical uncertainties and social precarity, while waves of protest and struggle continue to unfold as the islands negotiate their future squeezed in-between the power configurations of Japan and America.

The tragic yet spectacular burning on October 31, 2019 of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Shuri Castle, a symbol of the former Ryukyu kingdom reconstructed after the war, dissolves into memories of the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and other sights of historical annihilation and unrest that took place on the islands. The blazing castle complicates an exotic gaze onto Okinawa’s touristic landscape, where the pervasive presence of the US military bases remains ‘unseen’ by many of its visitors.

How can we grasp postwar ‘Okinawa’ as/in cinematic images, both as a geopolitical site (island chain) and an assemblage of socio-cultural constructions, while attending to their intersecting histories, narratives, as well as archives? If, as pointed out by critics such as Nakazato Isao, the framing of ‘Japanese cinema’ cannot fully contain certain works by Okinawan filmmakers or some of the moving images on/about Okinawa, is it still possible to talk about ‘Okinawa and cinema’ together by thinking beyond any rigid paradigm of national cinema?

The ‘burning image’ of the Castle registers as a vision of precarity from which the multiple temporalities charting Okinawa’s postwar transformations can be re-imagined and made perceptible, collapsing facile representational binarisms such as ‘Okinawa versus Japan’/ ‘Okinawans versus Japanese’ and so forth. Also, the (moving) images of the burning, captured, mediated, streamed and circulated through various digitized audio-visual recording gadgets and via different social media platforms, confront us as a vision of abundance. It is inspiring that new cinematic images, be they streaming clips, documentary footage, fiction films, or artists’ videos, are still being generated and circulated across various digital platforms to nourish the narratives of a ‘self-speaking island’.

Put into historical perspective, it is not true that ‘Okinawa’ has not possessed its own images beyond those produced and promoted within/by the American or Japanese visual regimes. Working with film and art historians and archivists, we have learned that Okinawa-based/related filmmakers have contributed to efforts to archive and make Okinawa visible through amateur and independent filmmaking since the 1970s.

Taking cues from a burning image, this special section asks burning questions. It seeks to examine a wide spectrum of socio-historical and political issues revolving around postwar Okinawa from the perspective of cinema and cinema culture. Specifically, our survey of the ‘cinematic’ is opened up to various genres of moving images such as fiction films, documentary, essay film, newsreel, home video, and artist’s documentary and video work and so forth. By engaging the politics of in/visibility, we invite papers that explore new historical perspectives and theoretical undertakings that approach ‘Okinawa’ as/in cinematic images both within the framework of Japanese cinema and beyond.

Possible topics include, but not limited to:
---Japanese nation/Japaneseness and the questions of subjectivity and identity
---World War II-related memories and trauma
---landscape, space, and Okinawa in cinema
---sound, voice, and music in Okinawa-related visual works
---Okinawa as time-image/movement-image
---film preservation and archiving in Okinawa
---gender and the experience of postwar US military occupation

Please send your 300-word Abstract plus 100-word bio to Ma Ran (ranandran101 at gmail.com<mailto:ranandran101 at gmail.com>) and Kosuke Fujiki (fujiki at pub.ous.ac.jp<mailto:fujiki at pub.ous.ac.jp>) by 20 May, 2020.
Decisions will be made by 15 June, 2020.
Full Papers due: 1 October, 2020.
For the detailed ‘instructions for authors’, please refer to the official site of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rjkc20.


Michael Raine, Associate Professor in English and Writing Studies
Western University, Canada
co-editor, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema
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