Base wars

When a journalist, blogger or columnist refers to “U.S. military presence,” they are most likely referring to acknowledged combat zones like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, or to the less substantiated, off-the-grid chicanery we’re engaged in in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Iran and Somalia.

They are generally not talking about the thousand-odd military bases scattered around the globe in places like Italy, South Korea, Spain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Singapore, Kyrgyzstan, Greenland and Japan. The United States’ military presence in Japan, in particular, is overwhelming: The Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force maintain roughly 90 military bases across mainland Japan and Okinawa, which house roughly 40,000 U.S. troops, according to 2010 estimates.

The impact of the U.S. military presence in these so-called “base towns” is an instrumental part of Dr. Davinder Bhowmik’s upcoming lecture, “The Spirit of 1968 and 1969 in the Base Town Literature of Ikezawa Natsuki and Murakami Ryuu,” held Thursday, Jan. 26, and sponsored by Portland State’s Center for Japanese Studies.

Bhowmik, an associate professor and the associate department chair of Japanese literature at the University of Washington, will use Ikezawa’s historical novel Kadena and Murakami’s comic novella 69 to “focus on how the base towns that lie at the heart of both stories generate high drama,” according to the CJS’s website.

“Professor Bhowmik is presenting a really unique perspective,” said Dr. Jon Holt, assistant professor of Japanese literature at Portland State and former student of Dr. Bhowmik’s. “She’s found a way to connect these two writers through literature but also through U.S. politics.”

Although Ikezawa’s and Murakami’s books were published in 2009 and 1987, respectively, both are set during the Japan of the late ’60s, a tumultuous period in the country’s history. During this time, the U.S. military utilized its bases in Okinawa and Sasebo to deploy troops to nearby Vietnam, which contributed to the growing resentment over the United States’ presence and increased calls to end the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1960.

The treaty, officially known as the “Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan,” came into effect May 19, 1960, and ensured that, among other things, the U.S. military could use vast swaths of Japanese land to house U.S. military operations. The intense concentration of U.S. troops is especially high in Okinawa, a southern Japanese prefecture situated roughly halfway between Taiwan and Japan’s mainland.

Approximately half of the U.S. troops in Japan are stationed in Okinawa. U.S. military bases occupy nearly 20 percent of the land on main Okinawa Island, 75 percent of the total land area used exclusively by the U.S. military in Japan is in Okinawa, and an official U.S. Marine Corps website features prominently in a cursory Internet search of “Okinawa.”

“Within the official Japan-USA relationship, the Okinawa base issue looms large to the Japanese populace,” said Dr. Lawrence Kominz, professor of Japanese at Portland State. “For the Okinawans themselves the issue is bigger than ‘large’; it’s ‘huge.’ On the other side of the coin, I imagine that few Americans could place Okinawa on a world map.”

The continuous, overwhelming presence of foreign troops has produced some unsurprising results.

In a 2010 survey, 71 percent of Okinawans found the troops unnecessary—though one suspects that a sizable portion would have used stronger language than “unnecessary”: There have been approximately 200,000 accidents and crimes involving U.S. troops in Okinawa in the past fifty years, including several high-profile sexual assaults, rapes and kidnappings. Because of the extraterritorial nature of criminal proceedings involving U.S. troops in a foreign land, it can often feel like justice was not served.

“There are problems associated with the bases every year,” Holt said. “This is the legacy of the American bases in Japan.”

Although the difficulties of “base town” life in late ’60s Japan provide a backdrop for both 69 and Kadena, Murakami and Ikezawa train their literary eyes on different targets: Where the protagonists in Kadena become spies against the U.S. in Vietnam, Kensuke Yazaki, the teenage protagonist of 69, delights in the films, women and pop culture of the era, which is a hallmark of Murakami’s work.

“Ryu has always been very much in step with what contemporary Japanese talk about,” Holt said, noting that the author often appears on topical news programs in Japan. “He is very much aware of social issues that are happening today.”

Keeping abreast of what is happening today in Japan is a vital component of the Center for Japanese Studies’ work.

“CJS activities often give audiences a glimpse at the real world of Japan and how academic learning translates into practice,” said Patricia J. Wetzel, interim vice provost for international affairs and Japanese specialist. “The CJS gives Japanese studies so much more depth than we can provide in the day-to-day setting of classes and curriculum.”