#risewithhenoko: Tinsagu Nu Hana (てぃんさぐぬ花 )

Beautiful, multi-generational Hawai'ian Uchinanchu (Okinawan) performance of "Tinsagu Nu Hana" (Balsam Flowers), one of Okinawa's most beloved folk songs.

Lyrics:

Tinsagu nu hana ya chimi sachi ni sumiti
Uyanu yushi gutu ya chimu ni sumiri

Tin nuburi bushi ya yumiba yuma rishiga
Uyanu yushi gutu ya yumin naran

Yuruha rasu funi ya ninu fua bushi miati
Wan na cheru uyaya wandu miati

Takaradama yatin migaka niba sabisu
Asayu chimu migachi uchiyu watara

Makutu suru hitu ya atuya ichi madin
Umuku tun kanati chiyunu sakai

Nashiba nani gutun nairu gutu yashiga
Nasan yui karadu naran sadami
Nasan yui karadu naran sadami

English translation:

Just as my fingernails are stained with the pigment from balsam flowers,
my heart is painted with the teachings of my parents.
Although the stars in the sky are countable,
the teachings of my parents are not.
Just as ships that run in the night are guided to safety by the North star,
I am guided by my parents who gave birth to me and watch over me.

There’s no point in possessing magnificent jewelry if you don’t maintain it;
people who maintain their bodies will live life wonderfully.
The desires of the person who lives sincerely will always run true
and as a result she will prosper.
You can do anything if you try,
but you can’t if you don’t.

With many thanks to the Hawaii Okinawa Artists Collaboration 2017

Featured Artists: Reverend Shindo Nishiyama, Derek Fujio Sensei, Derek "Ichiro" Shiroma Sensei, Eric Wada Sensei, Norman Kaneshiro Sensei, Keith Nakaganeku Sensei, Allison Yanagi Sensei, Jon Itomura (HOCA), Cyrus Tamashiro, Kathy Oshiro, Yukiko Pierce, Janine Kiyosaki, Nathan Nishida, Kymberlie and Katelynn Arakaki, Brandon Ing, Carolina Higa, Chantel Ikehara, Shelby Oshiro, Travis Oshiro.

With Special Thanks to:
President Doris Oshiro (Jikoen Hongwanji), Honolulu Community College Mele Program, Moanalua Mene-Tv Broadcast Journalism, and Blue Planet Recording Studio

#risewithhenoko: "Our Island's Treasure" tells the story of Henoko, Okinawa's elders' struggle to save their sacred coral reef and dugong ecosystem for future generations

Our Island's Treasure (私達の島の宝) from Kaiya Yonamine on Vimeo.

#RiseforHenoko - Kaiya Yonamine of Global Uchinanchu Alliance　グローバルうちなんちゅ同盟: May 31, 2019 - asks that supporters of Henoko's coral reef and dugong ecoregion and advocates of planetary survival, please spread, and share the link to her documentary film “Our Island’s Treasure” Documentary ドキュメンタリー映画「私達の島の宝.  Please tag environmental orgs, human rights and indigenous rights groups, media and teacher groups.

“Our Island’s Treasure" tells the story about the indigenous Uchinanchu people's fight to protect their sacred dugong and coral reef ocean in Henoko, Okinawa from Japanese government landfill and construction of an offshore US military training airstrip and port (over an ecoregion covered with quicksand pits which will take years to reinforce, if possible, and an earthquake zone).

Frustrated by the lack of media coverage of the Okinawan 22- year struggle to save Okinawa's last intact, healthiest and most biodiverse coral reef and best dugong ecosystem, mother and daughter team, Moe and Kaiya Yonamine, made and sold thousands of cookies and paper cranes to raise funds to pay for flights and to stay in Okinawa.  They went to Henoko to support their elders

"This is one of the most biodiverse ocean regions on the planet and [Japanese and U.S. governments'] destruction is being done against the democratic will of the Okinawa people who voted vehemently against it," explains Moe Yonamine.

"Nonstop, our island’s people—with their bodies—are blocking construction trucks on land at sit-ins and die-ins, and—with their bodies—on kayaks, are blocking construction ships in the ocean — mostly led by hundreds of now elderly child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa," Yonamine adds.  (The air, sea, and ground fighting between Americans and Japanese in Okinawa was the bloodiest battle in their 4-year war in the Asia-Pacific.)

Kaiya Yonamine, a 17 year-old, 2nd generation Uchinanchu living in Portland, Oregon, released the trailer for her film on Earth Day.

"This documentary aims to show the fight of the elders and youth on the ground fighting to protect our ocean in Henoko and the interviews taken just weeks ago while we were there. Singing along with an old island song that I sang to her as a little girl,  and one that my grandmother sang to me, she shares  it in our indigenous language and with our indigenous instrument," Yonamine describes the beautiful song in the video trailer.

Please watch and share her trailer and HELP DISRUPT THE MEDIA SILENCE on the Sea of Henoko (not just a "less populated area in the north") but, instead, Okinawa's last intact, healthiest, most biodiverse, millennia-old coral reef, and best dugong seagrass habitat. Okinawans and their worldwide environmentalist, peace, and democracy supporters have been working for 23 years to save the Sea of Henoko.

Partial trailer transcript:

"Beautiful Sand. Proud People. Living along sparkling ocean waves. Ancient history of kings and queens. The kingdom overthrown by Japan in 1879. Violence brought upon this peaceful land during WWII.

"After the war, the U.S. put Okinawans in concentration camps while taking land to build bases. On what was left of this tiny paradise (the main island of Okinawa is 70 miles long and 7 miles wide) crammed with 32 bases, burdened with 70% of all U.S. military bases under Japan against the democratic will of the Uchinanchu people.

"Now the construction of a new base has begun. This time, in the ocean...Oura Bay is the name of the ocean that is being destroyed. This is one of the most biodiverse waters in the world bursting with life of over 5,300 species and 262 endangered species that are dependent on the sea. The Jp govt. is actively destroying this ocean. Concrete crushing coral. Using our own red soil to fill the sea. Killing our ocean.

"Kayactivists have been blocking ships. Elders have been staging sit-ins. War survivors have been blocking trucks. Raising fists. Singing island songs. Fighting for our ocean. And the media remains silent. As the destruction continues, our fight continues. We call on you to join us. And protect our ocean. Before we lose it forever."

YOU WILL FIND THE DOCUMENTARY LINK HERE ON FRIDAY, 5/31: Our Island's Treasure

Kaiya explains the urgency of her mission:

"The concrete began to be crushed in the beautiful ocean of Okinawa back in Dec..there was no media in the U.S. about it...I knew that people are fighting with their lives on the line for the ocean, for us, for all of us. So I decided I needed to take a camera and bridge us across the ocean... listening to the stories of people on the ground, I made this documentary to tell the world their story and show their fight -- our fight. The documentary is the result of interviewing Uchinanchu elders and student activists who are doing everything to protect our sacred ocean, even when the media ignores what's happening."

Okinawan American  Moe Yonamine is a teacher in Portland and a co-founder of Global Uchinanchu Alliance　グローバルうちなんちゅ同盟, which seeks to deepen connections between Overseas Okinawans and Okinawans living in their homeland (which includes the sea and all animals and plants living in the sea).

#SavetheDugong: Okinawa Dugong flags for Children's Day 2019 at Wansaka Oura Park, Okinawa

These beautiful  Okinawa Dugong flags for Children's Day at Wansaka Oura Park were made by Mr. Takuma Higashionna, who has memories of swimming with dugongs in the Sea of Henoko, and who is one of the Dugong Lawsuit plaintiffs. The federal lawsuit, initiated in 2003, is now on appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The plaintiffs have challenged a plan by the  U.S. and Japanese governments to landfill not only Okinawa's last intact, healthiest, and most biodiverse coral reef, but also the Okinawa dugong's most important seagrass feeding ground, despite appeals by Okinawans and their worldwide supporters for 23 years to save the world-class natural cultural heritage ecoregion.

The Japanese government, so far, has ignored a democratic referendum that took place in February this year, in which an overwhelming majority of Okinawa voters opposed the destruction. The Okinawan people are fully supported by Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki, who succeeded Govenor Takeshi Onaga.  The late Governor Onaga won the governorship, after a campaign supported by the All-Okinawa coalition that bridged conservative and liberal political parties.  Their focus was and is shared Okinawan unity, dignity, and cultural heritage.

Peter Galvin, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, tells us that dugongs, gentle marine mammals (salt water relatives of manatees), EW revered by native Okinawans, and celebrated as “sirens” that bring warnings of tsunamis. The dugong is listed as an natural monument of national cultural significance under Japan’s Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. Under the U.S. National Historic Protection Act and int. law, the U.S. must avoid or mitigate any harm to places or things of cultural significance to another country.

Mr. Higashionna told Americans while at court in San Francisco that "The U.S. government must realize that the Okinawa dugong is a treasure for Okinawa and for the world.”

Dugongs (also related to elephants as well as manatees) can live for 70 years and grow to nearly 1,000 pounds. In the transparent aqua waters of  Henoko Bay, vast herds of dugongs once grazed peacefully on underwater fields of sea grass. But after decades of active U.S. military war training in the region, possibly fewer than 50 last dugongs now struggle to survive in the formerly idyllic Okinawan islands  — once dubbed the “Galápagos of the East” for its rich biodiversity. Recent surveys showed 3 dugongs living in the Sea of Henoko. Tragically, one was killed in March, and washed ashore covered with abrasions and injuries.

Every year in Okinawa (and Japanese) people display carp flags from late April to early May in celebration of children’s day, which marks the end of Golden Week, a series of holidays that start on April 29, Showa Day, the birthday of former Emperor Showa, who died in the year 1989, May 3, Constitution Day, May 4, Greenery Day and May 5, Children's Day.

30日 4月 2019
ジュゴンのぼりin わんさか大浦パーク
今年で5回目になります。手作りジュゴンのぼり、4月29日にわんさか大浦パークにあげてきました！
今年も、地域のこどもたちや名護市内の保育園のこどもたちに、絵を描いてもらいました。ありがとうございました！！
ジュゴンが大浦湾に戻ってこられますように、と願いを込めて！
かわいいジュゴンたちをぜひ見に来て下さいね！感想もよろしくお願いします。

Earth Day 2018 - The Sea is the Treasure of Life - Miracle of Oura Bay and Yanbaru

Beautiful Henoko coral reef and dugong sea underwater photographs and music via One Peace Okinawa (events ongoing this weekend at Earth Day Tokyo／アースデイ東京) with photography by Takuya Nakamura: "A Miracle of Oura Bay and Yanbaru - About Precious Nature" and music by Milk (Maitreya) singing "The sea is the treasure of life."

Most of Okinawa's coral reefs have been lost because of coastal construction and global warming. Miraculously, coral reefs are still thriving in the sea of Henoko and Oura Bay where nutrients and fresh water from Yanbaru's subtropical rainforest and living tidelands continue to the sea. Does anyone really want to build a base by landfilling this magnificent sea, a treasure of life?

"The Sea is a Treasure of Life" by Milk (Maitreya)

Island treasure Coral sea
A cradle of life
Nurturing creatures
Breakwaters to protect the island
Treasure chest in the sea
Jewels spun over a thousand years
Miracles connecting life.

Coral reefs are treasures of the earth...
The sea and the forest are connected...
The living guardian rainforest of the sea...
The sea and the land are connected...
There is no border between them...

The sea is the treasure of life...

Koshichi Taira: Thinking about True Peace during the 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII • Nago Museum Gallery • Aug. 14-30, 2015

Koshichi Taira Photography Exhibition

Thinking about True Peace during the 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII,

focusing on the aftermath of the Himeyuri Student Nurses Corp.

8/14 (Friday)-8/30 (Sunday)

Nago Museum Gallery
Nago City, Okinawa 

Admission: free

More Info (Jp): http://www.city.nago.okinawa.jp/4/3282.html

Okinawan photographer Koshichi Taira's photography is as unblinking, empathetic, and profound as that of Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu.  But where Tomatsu is known (albeit not well known), there is almost nothing about Taira's brilliant work translated into English.

The Nago Museum's exhibition of Taira's photography, which opens today, invites viewers to think about the nature of true peace during the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.

222 Okinawan female high school students, aged 15 to 19, were mobilized as the Himeyuri Student Nurse Corps in March, 1945 as the US-Jp battle in Okinawa began on the ground. (US bombing of Okinawa began in October 1944). During the battle, about 200,000 lives were lost, including 120,000 Okinawan civilians, one-third of the population. Among the Himeyuri nurses, 123 students and 13 teachers were killed.

Kenzaburo Oe: "Hiroshima must be engraved in our memories: It’s a catastrophe even more dramatic than natural disasters, because it’s man-made. To repeat it, by showing the same disregard for human life in nuclear power stations, is the worst betrayal of the memory of the victims..."

"Japanese Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe on the 70th Anniversary of US Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," via Democracy Now!:

...KENZABURO OE: [translated] So, three years ago, the day after the disaster, the weeks after the disaster, I believe that all Japanese people were feeling a great regret. And the atmosphere in Japan here was almost the same as following the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the war. And at that time, because of this atmosphere, the government at the time, which is the Democratic Party of Japan, with the agreement of the Japanese people, pledged to totally get rid of or decommission the more than 50 nuclear power plants here in Japan. However, the situation following the disaster, particularly in Fukushima, where so many people are suffering from this, has not changed at all.

And the current atmosphere or attitude of the government now in Japan has totally changed...the Liberal Democratic Party...led by Prime Minister Abe, is...completely having no regret and no looking back on ...what happened to Japan, and is instead actually actively pushing this forward. And I’m very fearful now that actually all throughout Japan and through the Japanese people, the atmosphere which is now growing and increasing is a spreading of this Prime Minister Abe’s ideology and worldview.

AMY GOODMAN: Yet he was elected as prime minister.

KENZABURO OE: [translated] Yes, he has won in two elections until now. But, however, now, because he has the majority in both of the houses of the Japanese Parliament, it means he is, in essence, able to do anything, go forward anything. And the first thing he is also trying to do now is to revise the constitution, which was created democratically by the Japanese people following the loss in World War II and Hiroshima and Nagasaki experience....

And now, under the current Prime Minister Abe administration, Japan is moving toward actively participating in United States wars. And what I am now most fearful about is the unfortunately likely possibility under Prime Minister Abe that this second pillar of Article 9 will be in danger, but not only this, that even the first pillar, that Japan may actually, within the next year or two or three or four years, actually directly participate in war...

300,000 Japanese: "Protect the Constitution! Protect Okinawa from Shinzo Abe! Don't Start a War!"

Great video via Michael Penn of Shingetsu News Agency (SNA): Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs) protest against the Abe War Bill, forced U.S. military base construction in Okinawa, and in favor of the Peace Constitution, rule of law, and democratic society.

Michael Hoffman's "A political turning point for Japan’s youth," published at The Japan Times on August 1, 2015, explores the mass student movement for democracy and peace for Japan and Okinawa:

Somebody needed to make the point that Abe’s primary accountability is not to U.S. lawmakers but to the people of Japan. Cynical calculations that the people of Japan wouldn’t bother were not unreasonable...

Years pass and nothing happens — then, suddenly, something does, and nothing is the same. What is the catalyst that turns passivity into activism? It’s like asking why this particular straw and not that one broke the camel’s back...

On July 1, 2014, the Abe Cabinet adopted a resolution sharply reinterpreting the Constitution as permitting what for decades had been regarded as forbidden: a global military role for the “pacifist” nation under the name “collective self-defense.”...On July 15, after a debate whose striking features were the vagueness of the government’s explanations and its hamfisted bullying of opposition lawmakers posing awkward questions, the Lower House voted, brushing aside the doubts of Constitutional scholars and of the public...

That was it. The camel sank to its knees...Sunday Mainichi magazine ventured a bold headline: “It’s begun — 300,000 people surrounding the Diet!”

That figure — 300,000 — is deeply significant. It takes us back to May 1960. The prime minister of the day, soon to be ousted, was Nobusuke Kishi, whose administration forced through the Diet a revised Japan-U.S. security pact in a manner strikingly similar to Abe’s handling of the current security legislation. Three hundred thousand is the prevailing estimate of the size of the enraged crowd that massed in front of the prime minister’s official residence, shouting for Kishi’s head. They got it. He resigned a month later.

The 1960 protests against PM Kishi's ramming through of the US-Japan Security Treaty (ANPO)

drew millions of protestors from all walks of life in multiple protests over months. 

 Demonstrators at the Japanese parliament building, Tokyo, June 18, 1960. 

(Photo © Asahi Shimbun Photoarchives)

The Sense of Sacred: Mauna Kea, Hawai'i and Oura Bay, Okinawa

The Okinawan movement to save Henoko and the Yambaru subtropical rainforest is one aspect of a global indigenous movement calling for respect of indigenous cultural heritage, especially natural sacred sites under ongoing threat of destruction.

Indigenous peoples know that sacred sites are centers of collective spiritual and psychological power that go into the past and into the future, connecting generations. Maybe this is why sacred and cultural heritage sites have been targeted for destruction by invading powers for millennia.

In "The Sense of Sacred: Mauna Kea and Oura Bay," published at The Asia-Pacific Journal earlier this month,  Katherine Muzik  compares the similarities between the struggles to save Mauna Kea in Hawai'i and Henoko in Okinawa to introduce William B.C. Chang's analysis of the foreign settler pattern of violating indigenous religious and cultural heritage rights as well as land rights and indigenous human rights:

“Sacred is not necessarily a place. It is a relationship, a deep visceral relationship: beyond reason, beyond law, beyond rationality.”

These words were recently spoken by William B.C. Chang, a University of Hawaii Law Professor, in his impassioned testimony to the UH Board of Regents, about the current conflict on Mauna Kea here in Hawaii.

To the Hawaiians, the Mountain known as Mauna Kea, or Mauna a Wākea, on the Island of Hawaii, is a sacred place. Thus, the proposed construction of the northern hemisphere’s biggest telescope, thirty meters tall (TMT), 18 stories high, on eight acres of the mountain top, costing $1.4 billion, has recently sparked peaceful but ardent protests and occupations by Native Hawaiians, environmentalists and allies across the Pacific. With 13 telescopes already blighting the landscape, the protesters seek to prevent further desecration.

To the Okinawans, the Sea known as Oura Bay, on the Island of Okinawa, is also a sacred place. For nearly two decades, Okinawans have protested its destruction by US/Japan military expansion.

Besides being sacred and beautiful, what else do these two very distant places share? They share history, of illegal takeovers by a foreign power and the subsequent, on-going outrage among the local populations. Locals in Hawaii and Okinawa are deeply angered by the heinous and reckless environmental destruction their islands have suffered. They are frustrated by the destruction that continues, despite prolonged protests. In both cases, illegal land-grabs by the US have resulted in the waste of their natural resources and the disintegration of their cultural identities. However, being sacred, both places continue to inspire passionate and courageous struggles against foreign dominance.

The Hawaiian Islands were once a kingdom, a sovereign nation. In a series of events, the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893 by a group of US and European businessmen, ending in annexation as a “Territory of the United States” in 1900. And so too, were the Ryukyu Islands, sovereign. Invaded by Satsuma forces in 1609, they were formally annexed by Japan in 1879 as “Okinawa Prefecture”. After World War 2, the US “acquired” Okinawa from Japan, establishing military bases which have remained and proliferated, destructively, for the last seventy years.

8.27.14: NHK filmed a dugong & turtle swimming together at the Sea of Henoko

On August 27, NHK TV filmed a dugong and turtle swimming near each other, off Okinawa's Henoko coast. Via @Yuric117 on Twitter. 

Laura Kina's Blue Hawai'i & Wesley Uenten's "Okinawan Diasporan Blues"

"Graves By the Sea" by Laura Kina

In this excerpt from "Okinawan Disaporan Blues," included in Laura Kina's Blue Hawaii exhibition catalogue, Wesley Uenten describes the Japanese colonial rule's erasure of traditional Okinawan culture and ongoing resistance by a group of grandmothers and grandfathers, child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, to the US plan to turn the habitat of the Okinawan dugong, a sacred cultural icon, into another military base:

...At least on the level of cultural genocide, what happened to Okinawans was similar to what happened to Native Americans. It seems so familiar when I read about the...philosophy of the “Indian Schools” that prohibited Native American school children from speaking their own language or practicing their culture.... By the time that my grandmother was born in 1893, most Okinawan children were in schools, where they would be punished for speaking the Okinawan language and expected to worship the Japanese emperor. A large wooden tag with the words 方言札 (hōgen fuda), or “dialect tag,” was place around the neck of school children who spoke in the Okinawan “dialect.” The tag symbolically relegated the Okinawan language to the inferior status as a backward “dialect” of Japanese, while corporeally ingraining a sense of shame and fear in generations of Okinawans for speaking their own language and being their own selves...

Physical genocide did take place on Okinawa. Japan’s leaders knowingly caused about a fourth to a third of Okinawa’s population to perish in less than 3 months during the Battle of Okinawa when they used Okinawa as a buffer to hold off American troops heading toward Naichi (mainland Japan)...in 1945...

I stare at "Graves by the Sea." ...Departed souls encased in concrete tombs pushed up against each other. They are testament of the reverence for ancestors and tradition in Okinawa that contradicts the reality of the lack of space on Okinawa...There is a strong and powerful message that the ancestors and land is telling us through Laura’s work.

I end this essay at a time when I have just returned from a trip to Washington D.C. with an Okinawan delegation that was making a direct appeal against plans by the U.S. and Japanese governments to push ahead with construction of a new U.S. Marine Air Station on the clear blue waters of Henoko...At this time, both the Jp and U.S. governments are stepping up their attempts to push past unyielding local Okinawan opposition... Henoko is the site of a large thriving coral reef, turtle spawning grounds, seaweed beds, and an already endangered species of dugong. The blue ocean of Henoko will be no more if this plan goes through.

Most of the officials, politicians, and researchers we met in Washington D.C. [during the Jan. 2014 Okinawan Delegation] had made up their mind about new base construction at Henoko saying that it is the best plan... However, what the delegation was trying to get across to deaf ears was that Okinawans have stopped the construction for 18 years by placing their bodies in front of ships and equipment coming to start construction. Old people, as old and tiny as my Baban in my memories of her, have come to sit on the beach everyday in quiet but unrelenting resistance to American Manifest Destiny and Japanese fatalistic dependency on that destiny...

Wesley Ueunten is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. A third generation Okinawan, he was born and raised in Hawaiʻi and received his Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley.

Earthjustice: Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Construction of U.S. Military Airstrip in Japan That Would Destroy Habitat of Endangered Okinawa Dugongs

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Construction of U.S. Military Airstrip in Japan
That Would Destroy Habitat of Endangered Okinawa Dugongs

Marine Base Threatens Survival of Manatee Relative

SAN FRANCISCO— American and Japanese conservation groups today asked a U.S. federal court to halt construction of a U.S. military airstrip in Okinawa, Japan that would pave over some of the last remaining habitat for endangered Okinawa dugongs, ancient cultural icons for the Okinawan people. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, is the latest in a long-running controversy over the expansion of a U.S. Marine air base at Okinawa’s Henoko Bay. Preliminary construction on the base began earlier this year.

Dugongs are gentle marine mammals related to manatees that have long been revered by native Okinawans, even celebrated as “sirens” that bring friendly warnings of tsunamis. The dugong is listed as an object of national cultural significance under Japan’s Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, the equivalent of the U.S. National Historic Protection Act. Under this act and international law, the United States must take into account the effect of its actions and avoid or mitigate any harm to places or things of cultural significance to another country.

“Our folktales tell us that gods from Niraikanai [afar] come to our islands riding on the backs of dugongs and the dugongs ensure the abundance of food from the sea,” said Takuma Higashionna, an Okinawan scuba-diving guide who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Today, leaving their feeding trails in the construction site, I believe, our dugongs are warning us that this sea will no longer provide us with such abundance if the base is constructed. The U.S. government must realize that the Okinawa dugong is a treasure for Okinawa and for the world.”

The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has listed dugongs as “critically endangered,” and the animals are also on the U.S. endangered species list. In 1997 it was estimated that there may have been as few as 50 Okinawa dugongs left in the world; more recent surveys have only been able to conclude that at least three dugongs remain in Okinawa. Although the Defense Department acknowledges that this information is “not sufficient,” and despite the precariously low dugong population even under the most conservative estimates, the Defense Department has authorized construction of the new base.

The Nature Conservation Society of Japan reported earlier this month that it had found more than 110 locations around the site of the proposed airstrips where dugongs had fed on seagrass this spring and summer.

“Okinawa dugongs can only live in shallow waters and are at high risk of going extinct. These gentle animals are adored by both locals and tourists. Paving over some of the last places they survive will not only likely be a death sentence for them, it will be a deep cultural loss for the Okinawan people,” said Peter Galvin, director of programs at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Today’s legal filing, which supplements a suit filed in 2003, seeks to require the U.S. Department of Defense to stop construction activities on the new airstrip until it conducts an in-depth analysis aimed at avoiding or mitigating harm the expansion will cause for the Okinawa dugong. In April 2014 the Defense Department concluded that its activities would not harm the dugong, but that conclusion did not consider all possible effects of the new airstrip and ignored important facts. In addition, the department excluded the public, including local dugong experts, from its analysis.

For years many locals have protested and opposed the base-expansion plan for Okinawa, where 20 percent of the island is already occupied by U.S. military.

“Basic respect demands that the United States make every effort not to harm another country’s cultural heritage. U.S. and international law require the same,” said Earthjustice attorney Martin Wagner. “The Defense Department should not allow this project to go forward without making every effort to understand and minimize its effects on the dugong. That means fully understanding the state of the entire Okinawan dugong population, how it depends on the seagrass beds around the proposed airstrip, and how construction and operation of the base might harm it. To ensure that no relevant information is excluded, the process and all related information must be fully open to the public.”

Today’s lawsuit was filed by Earthjustice on behalf of the U.S. organizations Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network; the Japanese organizations Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation and the Save the Dugong Foundation; and three Japanese individuals.

Asahi: Unique, unknown species living in Oura Bay & Sea of Henoko ("treasure trove" of biodiversity) under threat of destruction, extinction...

A newly discovered species of a parasitic conch 

(Via Asahi, via Diving Team Snack Snufkin)

Erosion, landfill, and mass bleaching of coral has damaged much of Okinawa's coast. Over 90% of Japan's coral is in Okinawa; yet on Okinawa Island, the proportion of live coral is less than 5%.

10 years ago, 889 coral scientists from 83 countries, attending the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium in Okinawa, signed a resolution calling on the govs of Jp and the US to abandon their joint plan to construct a base at Henoko.

Coral reefs and lagoons used to be major source of cultural distinctiveness in traditional Okinawa, as with other indigenous cultures in the Pacific islands. Coral reefs are called the "rainforests of the sea" because they nourish a rich abundance of biodiversity. Worldwide, coral reefs only comprise 0.1% of the global ocean area, yet they contain a quarter of all marine species. Reef-building coral, fish, shellfish, sponges, and other marine life gather to create a unique ecosystem. They are of incomparable value for food and eco-tourism destinations.

Almost 400 types of coral form Okinawa’s reefs, which support more than 1,000 species of fish, marine mammals, including the beloved dugong, and hawksbill, loggerhead, and green sea turtles.

Erosion, landfill, and mass bleaching of coral has damaged much of Okinawa's coast. Over 90% of Japan's coral is in Okinawa; yet on Okinawa Island, the proportion of live coral is less than 5%. This is part of a global trend: coral reefs will become the first ecosystem that human activity will completely destroy by global warming, pollution and landfill, in just a few decades.

The beautiful and vital Sea of Henoko and Oura Bay ecoregion is an exception to the trend of dying coral reefs in Okinawa and the world.

Takao Nogami's Asahi article outlines the incredible (largely undiscovered) biodiversity that will be destroyed if the Japanese and US governments landfill and build an airbase over Oura Bay and the Sea of Henoko:

Researchers are raising new alarms about the ecological threat posed by land reclamation work planned for the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture in a bay where 10 new species have been discovered since 2007...

...these newly discovered species as well as countless others that still remain unknown could be destroyed forever by the construction work, which would not only reclaim land but also change currents and could adversely impact the coral ecosystem...

The unique structure of Oura Bay is believed to be the major reason many rare species live in the ecosystem...the entrance to the bay not only has a well-developed coral reef, but the area is also shallow. However, the bay becomes deeper, and that unusual structure is believed to allow many unknown species to survive there.

Two rivers empty into the bay and the river mouths are covered in mangrove forests and mudflats. Beyond that area is a wide variety of environments, such as seaweed beds, sandy bottoms, muddy areas and coral reef...the interlaying and connecting of such different environments, each of which has its own ecosystem...

Makoto Kato, chairman of the nature preservation committee of the Ecological Society of Japan, said Oura Bay was especially important because it contains the last coral ecosystem in Japan that has remained relatively undisturbed by human development.

"The presence of unrecorded species, such as huge sea cucumbers, shellfish and crustaceans, is but one example of how valuable that ecosystem is," said Kato, who is also a professor of environmental studies at Kyoto University. "While Japan does not have much in the way of underground mineral resources, its marine biodiversity is its true treasure. Unfortunately, political leaders in Japan do not realize that fact.

"The coral ecosystem and biodiversity of the Ryukyu archipelago is undoubtedly Japan's largest treasure trove, and land reclamation work in such waters would be an act of stupidity that would be irreversible."

Nogami's entire article is a must-read for all interested in marine life preservation.

Marine biologist Dr. Katherine Muzik diving at the Sea of Henoko, the best (one of the few still living) coral reef in all of Okinawa & Japan

Katherine Muzik diving at the Sea of Henoko and Oura Bay, July 2013

10 years ago, 889 coral scientists from 83 countries, attending the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium in Okinawa, signed a resolution calling on the govs of Jp and the US to abandon their joint plan to construct a base at Henoko.

Coral reefs and lagoons used to be major source of cultural distinctiveness in traditional Okinawa, as in other South Pacific islands. Coral reefs are called the "rainforests of the sea" because they nourish a rich abundance of biodiversity. Worldwide, coral reefs only comprise 0.1% of the global ocean area, yet they contain a quarter of all marine species. Reef-building coral, fish, shellfish, sponges, and other marine life gather to create a unique ecosystem. They are of incomparable value for food and eco-tourism destinations.

Almost 400 types of coral form Okinawa’s reefs, which support more than 1,000 species of fish, marine mammals, including the beloved dugong, and hawksbill, loggerhead, and green sea turtles.

Erosion, landfill, and mass bleaching of coral has damaged much of Okinawa's coast. Over 90% of Japan's coral is in Okinawa; yet on Okinawa Island, the proportion of live coral is less than 5%. This is part of a global trend: coral reefs will become the first ecosystem that human activity will completely destroy by global warming, pollution, and landfill, in just a few decades.

The beautiful and vital Sea of Henoko and Oura Bay ecoregion is an exception to the trend of dying coral reefs in Okinawa and the world.

Katherine Muzik via JT on May 2, 2014:

Having lived in Okinawa and worked there as a marine biologist for 11 years, long ago (1981-1988) and more recently (2007-2011), I have dived the entire Ryukyu archipelago from Amami and Kikai in the north to Yonaguni in the south. I can therefore assure you there is no comparable reef ecosystem remaining such as the beautiful reef at Oura. It is indeed miraculous that it is still surviving. Aki samiyo (“Oh my goodness!” in Okinawan)! There is no disease nor bleaching there! It has so far avoided the troubles that continue to plague and destroy coral reefs worldwide, whether in the Pacific or the Caribbean. (I am sure that you are quite painfully aware that reefs all over the world are dying, thus making any coral reef alive anywhere a truly sacred place.)

Oura Bay is a unique and spectacular ecosystem, including mangroves, a river, a sandy beach with crabs, numerous patch reefs in shallow water (where my specialty, blue corals and red sea fans, thrive), not to mention threatened dugongs and all of the species of clownfish in Japan, shallow beds of sea grasses beyond count, and, most amazingly, a very spectacular deeper reef, nicknamed the “Coral Museum,” with countless gorgeous corals...

Crushing these beautiful and quintessential corals just must not, cannot happen...

Last July, I returned to Okinawa from here in Kauai at the request of the Okinawan Environmental Network. I was asked to dive at Oura Bay and to lend my support to its protection. During my visit I met with the mayor of Nago, who is valiantly opposed to construction/destruction at Oura...

I am deeply honored to have met him [the Emperor] and the Empress several times at their palace during the time I lived in Okinawa. He is a marine biologist too, and since his goby fishes often find their home on the branches of “my” octocorals, I collected some for him to study...

Sherry Nakanishi: "Music vs Militarism: OKINAWA"

"Music vs Militarism: OKINAWA" by BY SHERRY NAKANISHI

In total, 150,000 Okinawans died during the final battles of the Second World War, a third of the civilian population. The number exceeded the total of American and Japanese dead during the same period.

Things start off quite innocently. I receive two tickets from a colleague at school. On them is printed “Okinawa LIVE.” On the appointed day I arrive at the venue, Higashi Honganji, a large Buddhist temple in midtown Kyoto.

My husband, child, and I cross the vast pigeon-thronged gravel spaces of the temple precincts, reach the correct hall and are greeted warmly by monks...

The auditorium is large, and filled. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have come to hear the Okinawan message. On center stage, a man stands alone, holding a sanshin, the traditional Okinawa three-stringed instrument. “We can only fight through our music, it is all we have,” he says. And an hour and a half passes by as the truth of Okinawa’s recent history spills out, accompanied by intermittent notes played on the sanshin — sounds of nodding agreement.

The speaker is Chibana Shoichi, an Okinawan. Labelled an “anti-base activist” by Time Magazine [April/May 1997], perhaps he is more of a peace activist; one who out of love tries to protect the children, the people, the land, and the sea from being misused and ill-treated....

In ancient times Okinawa was independent, and known as Ryukyu Onkaku, the Ryukyu Kingdom. Before being annexed by Japan in 1865 this peaceful kingdom had no army. Looking into Ma-chan’s youthful face, I recall Chibana telling me how young Okinawans are picking up the traditional instruments, shamisen , jamisen, and sanshin, and proudly carrying on their culture. Okinawa has remained connected with its ancestral soul through its music, and this is how it has responded to an unimaginable military onslaught — with songs that are the spiritual poetry of peace, prayers for nature and for people.

We bow again, he departs; I am left holding the hope of Okinawa — the ancient teaching of the sanshin, the music and song of Okinawa; its gift to the people of Honshu, and the world.

I have a friend in Kyoto, a former soldier whose mind remains disturbed by his intensive military training. He knows he’s crazy, and travels the world sporadically, soul- searching for the truth. I tell him what I have learned about Okinawa, and ask for his response. He says:

This — as all things —
does not exist to be changed,
but for us to change.

His words send a shiver through me.
“I didn’t say it — it came from up there,” he says, pointing to the sky.

Read this rest of Sherry Nakanishi's beautiful essay at Kyoto Journal.

Nature Conservation Society of Japan: Giant corals are doing great; plenty of evidence of dugongs at Henoko....

Dugong feeding trails in the Sea of Henoko. (Photo: Nature Conservation Society of Japan)

The Okinawa Times recently reported on a reef check conducted in Henoko Bay by the Nature Conservation Society of Japan. Mariko Abe of the Society confirms that some of the massive corals in the area are doing great.

She stresses that there is plenty of evidence of dugong grazing trails in the seagrass.

Giant corals in Henoko Sea's coral reef habitat 
(Photo: Okinawa Times)

Save the Dugong Campaign Center's photos of "rain-forest"-like sea grasses, clown fish, & blue coral at Oura Bay, Okinawa

Save the Dugong Campaign Center's beautiful photos of Oura Bay (also called Sea of Henoko)  reflect findings a few years ago by Tokyo marine science researchers of a "rain-forest"-like variety of 182 different species of sea grasses and marine plants, clown fish, and exquisite blue coral.

See more photos here: http://www.sdcc.jp/nobase/no-base.html. Included: great photos of the mangrove wetlands and the amazing elder tent city (grandmothers and grandfathers who survived the Battle of Okinawa as children) who became eco-activists to save the natural environment of Henoko for their grandchildren.

SDCC says all are welcome to share these photos, to help spread the word on the precious biodiversity of Oura Bay.

Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe speaks out on Okinawa problem in Tokyo

Via Ryukyu Shimpo: "Nobel laureate Oe speaks out on Okinawa problem in Tokyo":

On April 26, Nobel laureate and novelist Kenzaburo Oe and other scholars discussed the Okinawa military base issue at a symposium held at a campus of the Hosei University in Tokyo...

A symposium on the Futenma-Henoko issue was held in Tokyo on April 26. Nobel laureate and novelist Kenzaburo Oe, Gavan McCormack, an emeritus professor of the Australian National University and Masaaki Gabe, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus, made the keynote lectures. After that, the participants discussed the relocation issue of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma...

Novelist Oe visited Okinawa many times to conduct interviews with residents about mass suicides during the Battle of Okinawa for his book of essays, Okinawa Notes. “We should not allow the government to destroy democracy by exercising the right to collective self-defense. We are concerned that the people of Okinawa will suffer great damage,“ he said. “Let us protect our pacifist constitution. This is the action or struggle that we living in the mainland of Japan can take up for the sake Okinawan people.”

A Nobel Peace Prize nomination (with Henoko connection) for the Japanese & Okinawan people who support Article 9, the Japanese Constitution's Peace Clause

Historian Doug Lummis describes the human costs of last century's wars:  

The 20th century was the century in which this great experiment was done. Let's set up an international system in which each state has the right of legitimate violence and the right of belligerency and monopolizes that. And, through the balance of power and so forth, each of these states will protect its citizens. That was the big experiment of the 20th century. What happened?

More people were killed through violence in the 20th century than any other hundred year period in the history of the world. And who killed these people? It wasn't the mafia, it wasn't the yakuza, it wasn't gangs, it wasn't drug wars, it was the state. The state killed over 200 million people.

While Japan was responsible for millions of these war dead, since 1945 no Japanese soldier has killed or been killed in war, thanks to the postwar Japanese Peace Constitution which states that the Japanese people are "resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government," and specifically outlaws war and state belligerency as a means to settle international conflict.

Japanese and Okinawan people, for over 60 years, have striven to keep the Peace Constitution intact, in letter, even as the spirit has been violated by state remilitarization. For these efforts, on April 9, 2014, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the “Japanese people who conserve Article 9” have been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Also on April 9, more than 3,000 Japanese citizens gathered in Tokyo to show their support for Article 9 at a rally organized by the Article 9 Association, a network founded in June 2004, to defend the war-renouncing clause of the Constitution. Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe, literary spokesperson for the postwar generation whose childhoods were devastated by the Second World War, stated to attendees:

By exercising the collective self-defense, Japan will directly participate in a war...

I’m afraid that Japan’s spirit is approaching the most dangerous stage over the past 100 years...

Another founder, Yasuhiro Okudaira, constitutional law professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, proclaimed:

Article 9 has inspired us. I'm proud of it.

The Japanese and Okinawan people have long been proud of Article 9. In 1946, Presbyterian minister and prewar peace activist Toyohiko Kagawa, twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, declared Article 9 “a model for the entire world." Former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota wrote that Article 9 gave him the "will to live" following the devastation of the Battle of Okinawa.

In John Junkerman’s 2008 documentary film, Japan’s Peace Constitution, historian Hidaka Rokuro, who was 28-years-old in 1945, described the Japanese response to Article 9:

From the moment Article 9 was announced, in newspapers and among the general public, it was greeted positively and with great sympathy. In that sense, the existence of Article 9 strongly influenced the posture of the general public, the public's response to the Japanese Constitution as a whole. At the time, Prime Minister Shidehara really talked about Article 9 with a great deal of pride…

In reality, the instant they say it, most citizens thought, "Ah, now we will never have to experience war again." There was a sense of relief that Japan had changed... Article 9 actually had significance in an international context. I don't think the Japanese people really grasped this at the time. But internationally, what it meant was Japan, as the aggressor nation, made a pledge to the world about its future conduct, especially a pledge to the people of Asia. And it was received as such by people in Asia. 

In the same film, John Dower, MIT historian and author of Embracing Defeat, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on postwar Japan, praised ordinary citizens for the nation’s postwar policy of peace:

I had a lot of respect for the Japanese people who cherish those ideals and fought for them and tried to understand them.

What held together that idealism of the early years, what made that survive over the decades of the 50s' and 60s' was not the Japanese government so much as ordinary Japanese people, a slot of them women or men who had served in the war, who remembered the war.

People who remembered what war was really like said, "We can't do this again. We have to cherish these ideals." The government, however, was saying, "Oh, we've got to go along with America." And so you have this split in Japan.

This is the second Nobel nomination for Article 9. In 2008, after the first Global Article 9 Conference was held in Tokyo, Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire nominated the organizers Peace Boat and the Global Article Nine Association (which Peace Boat co-founded) for a Peace Prize, on behalf of Article 9. The Peace Clause has long had the support of other Nobel Peace Laureates and prominent global peace activists.

In "The Nomination of Article 9 of Japan's Constitution for a Nobel Peace Prize," East Asia scholar Alexis Dudden describes the intriguing interconnection between Henoko and the Nobel nomination:

Late last spring, Takasu Naomi, a...housewife from Kanagawa prefecture outside Tokyo, began to collect signatures on her personal web page to preserve Article 9 in an effort to garner a Nobel Peace Prize for it and publicize its meaning internationally…she submitted an entry on behalf of…the “Japanese people who conserve Article 9”)…

During the New Year’s holidays, Hamaji Michio, a businessman in Tokyo...responded enthusiastically to Takasu’s drive: “Shocked and so inspired,” as he puts it. Believing deeply in the drive’s core message, Hamaji immediately offered his political and business world connections...

He... turned…to a small group of foreigners — mainly U.S.-based academics as well as Nobel laureates and nominees — many of whom by chance were also appearing in the January newspapers having signed a petition in support of Inamine Susumu’s bid for mayor in Nago, Okinawa…

Along with foreign scholars and luminaries, many high profile Japanese figures are increasingly speaking out on behalf of Article 9, the peace clause. On the eve of his birthday last December, Emperor Akihito (tutored by an American Quaker during his youth) defended Article 9. Then, on the eve of his birthday in February of this year, Crown Prince Naruhito attributed Japan's peace and prosperity to the pacifist Constitution.

And at the grassroots, citizen action across various civil society organizations and networks is buzzing.  The Global Article 9 Campaign held a second conference in Osaka in 2013. Since 2004, the Article 9 Association has generated more than 7,500 like-minded groups across Japan so far and will will commemorate their tenth anniversary on June 10, 2014 (at 6 pm at Shibuya-kokaido in Tokyo).

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More Info: 

 Petitioning The Norwegian Nobel Committee: Dear Mr.Thorbjorn Jagland Chair of the Nobel Committee  - To spread a pacifist constitution in all the countries of the world, please award the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese citizens have maintained the Constitution of Japan, Article 9 in particular:

The Japanese Constitution is a pacifist constitution that stipulates renunciation of war in its preamble and notably Article 9. Article 9 in particular has been playing an important role since the end of WWII in preventing the Japanese government from waging war. Article 9 has become the hope of those who aspire for peace in Japan and the world. However, the Japanese Constitution is currently under the threat of being revised.

To spread a peace constitution in all the countries of the world, we request that the Nobel Peace Prize be given to the Japanese citizens who have continued maintaining this pacifist constitution, Article 9 in particular, up until present.

Colin P. A. Jones, "Japan’s Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined," The Japan Times, March 26, 2014. 

Lawrence Repeta, "Japan’s Democracy at Risk – The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 15, 2013.

John Junkerman, "The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition of War," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 25,  2008.

Yoshikazu Sakamoto, "The Postwar and the Japanese Constitution: Beyond Constitutional Dilemmas," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, November 10, 2005.

"Kenzaburo Oe, Jakucho Setouchi, Masahide Ota found “1000-member committee to prevent Japan from entering wars" (Rally @Hibiya Park, March 20, 2014)," (TTT, March 18, 2014)

-JD

Kenzaburo Oe, Jakucho Setouchi, Masahide Ota found “1000-member committee to prevent Japan from entering wars" (Rally @Hibiya Park, March 20, 2014)

ARTICLE 9: Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The Abe administration wants to reinterpret and revise the Japanese Peace Constitution to send the Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) fight on behalf of other nations under the rubric of "collective defense."

This is not a new political struggle.  Okinawans have been on the front lines of the remilitarization of their prefecture since 1945, when the American military took over former Japanese bases and began a decade-long series of seizures (by force) of Okinawan farms and homes, for further base expansion. The ink was barely dry on Japan's pacifist Constitution, when in the early 1950's, Allen Dulles agitated for full Japanese remilitarization. The then Secretary of State wanted a Japanese military of between 300,000 and 350,000 men, to assist in US wars in Asia. Richard Nixon, as vice-president, supported Dulles, stating that Article 9 was a "mistake" while visiting Tokyo in 1953.

However, Dulles and other Cold War hawks were repeatedly thwarted by the majority of Japanese citizens who resisted the call to war (albeit during the sacrifice of Okinawa, which endured direct US military rule until 1972, serving as a major US weapons testing and combat training site during the wars in Korea and Vietnam).  Historian John Dower attributes Japan's pacifist policy to the democratically expressed will of the people, in John Junkerman's 2006 documentary film, Japan's Peace Constitution:

People who remembered what war was really like said, "We can't do this again. We have to cherish these ideals." The government, however, was saying, "Oh, we've got to go along with America." And so you have this split in Japan...

In the face of the Japanese citizenry's overwhelming support of Article 9, Japanese postwar governments fell into a gradual, barely noticeable process of chipping away at the prohibitions of Article 9 and growing JSDF capability. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Japan now ranks in the top ten countries in the world in military expenditure.

This slow pace shifted when neo-cons wielded control of US foreign policy during the Bush-Koizumi years.  Not only did they instigate the invasion of Iraq, but they also resurrected Cold War tensions in Asia, after a decade of thawing relations between China and Japan. Former PM Koizumi bowed to American neo-con demands to hasten Japan's remilitarization, at the same time he began his controversial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, reopening wartime wounds. During the Japanese neo-con's tenure, he worked to erode the remaining vestiges of Article 9, going as far as to send 1,100 members of the Japan Self Defense Force to Iraq (ostensibly for non-combat support), even though Iraq has never posed a threat to Japan.

Perhaps because of ongoing remorse for the millions of people killed during the Second World War, and perhaps because of vivid memories of fire bombings of all of Japan's major cities, the Battle of Okinawa, and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese and Okinawan mainstream challenged Koizumi's support of the US invasion of Iraq, similarly to the ongoing challenge of the Abe administration's assaults on what's left of Article 9, the only thing that keeps Japan from falling into the abyss that is war.

Concerned about their nation, high profile Japanese figures are increasingly speaking out on behalf of Article 9, the peace clause. On the eve of his birthday in December, Emperor Akihito (tutored by an American Quaker during his youth) defended Article 9. Then, on the eve of his birthday in February, Crown Prince Naruhito attributed Japan's peace and prosperity to the pacifist Constitution.

And this month, The Asahi, the Japan Daily Press and the Ryukyu Shimpo (one of Okinawa's two major daily newspapers) reported on the establishment of a “1000-member committee to prevent Japan from entering wars." Founding members include Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe, Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi, and former Okinawa governor Mashide Ota.

The Asahi:

"We have to stop the move to allow the Cabinet to undermine Article 9 simply by reinterpreting the Constitution," said constitutional scholar Yasuhiro Okudaira, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and one of the 16 founding members of the group...

"While Japan should contribute to world peace, it is becoming a country that can export arms and enter war," said writer Keiko Ochiai, another founding member.

Tetsumi Takara, a professor of constitutional law at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa Prefecture, commented, “For the Okinawan people who have experienced war, it looks as if war is imminent.”

JDP:

Distinguished writers, scholars and other academics in Japan have joined forces to challenge the government’s move to reinterpret the country’s Constitution. A group aiming to gather one thousand members, calling themselves the “1,000-member committee to prevent Japan from entering war..."

...Writer Makoto Sataka also reminded, “If the right to collective self-defense is granted, Japan would cross the line of ‘self-defense’ and also defend other countries, obliging Japan to engage in a war led by the United States.”

...Currently, 83 people have already signed the group’s appeal, including writer Jiro Akagawa, songwriter Reiko Yukawa and actor Bunta Sugawara.

Ryukyu Shimpo:

In an attempt to prevent the reinterpreting of Japan’s Constitution by the Abe administration to be able to defend allies who come under attack, on March 4, distinguished intellectuals set up a group called the  They proclaimed, “We will step up our criticism of and protest action against the government which has been trying to change Japan to enable it to enter wars. They treat Article 9 as a dead letter and approve the use of the right of collective self-defense.”

Founders of the committee are cultural workers and intellectuals such as writer Kenzaburo Oe, Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi and play writer So Kuramoto. Tetsumi Takara, a professor of graduate school of law of the University of the Ryukyus took part in the press conference. Former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota also joined as a founding member.

In their announcement, they referred to Okinawa, which hosts U.S. military bases, as being closely related to the issue of collective self-defense. They criticized the government, saying, “Without lessoning Okinawa’s burden of hosting the bases, they are forcing through building a new base in the Henoko district of Nago."

The committee will hold a rally on March 20 at the Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall in Tokyo. In addition, they will work to collect signatures and set up committees across the country."

Background:

John W. Dower, "Asia and the Nixon Doctrine: The New Face of Empire, Open Secret: The Kissinger-Nixon Doctrine in Asia, Eds. Virginia Brodine and Mark Selden, 1972. 

Japan's Peace Constitution (Transcript), Director: John Junkerman, 2006.

More Info: 

Article 9 Association 

Global Article 9 Campaign

Colin P.A. Jones, "Japan’s Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined," The Japan Times, March 26, 2014. 

Lawrence Repeta, "Japan’s Democracy at Risk – The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 15, 2013.

John Junkerman, "The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition of War," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 25,  2008.

Yoshikazu Sakamoto, "The Postwar and the Japanese Constitution: Beyond Constitutional Dilemmas," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, November 10, 2005.

Cherry blossoms in full bloom in Nago, Okinawa

Cherry blossoms in full bloom Nago, Okinawa, 

via Okinawa Outreach on FB. (Photo: Sueko Yamauchi)