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‘Playing Okinawan’: A Search for Authenticity and the Power Asymmetry in Japanese Appropriation of Okinawan Folk Music

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Japanese cultural appropriation of Okinawan min’yō (folk songs) in diasporic Okinawan communities in Osaka, focusing on Japanese–Okinawan relationships in min’yō learning. During the ‘Okinawa Boom’ in the 1990s and 2000s, Okinawan popular music, media and tourism gained nationwide popularity. Among them, Okinawan min’yō is celebrated and romanticised as a tradition that is ‘alive’ with creativity. Japanese enthusiasts of Okinawan min’yō not only learn music but also engage in ‘Okinawan play’ – intermingling with their Okinawan hosts and emulating them – and in doing so, seek to act out the sense of authenticity. In turn, Okinawan hosts earn recognition and respect from Japanese Okinawaphiles, which they may find insufficient in their relationship with fellow Okinawans. Although Japanese–Okinawan relationships seem mutually beneficial in the search for authenticity and recognition, the tension and conflicts surrounding the min’yō scene betray the host’s vulnerability. Moreover, Okinawan practitioners of min’yō are concerned with the possible degradation of the genre itself due to their dependence on Japanese participation. Such ambivalence indicates the power asymmetry between the appropriators and the appropriated, and the potentially negative effects on the object of cultural appropriation and the identity of the appropriated.