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Introduction People encounter internal borders across the years and around the world. A company advertises job openings, but a man looking for work is greeted by a sign announcing that those from his birthplace need not apply. A family from the same birthplace looking for a home encounters a similar sign in front of an apartment building with vacancies. A factory pays a woman from there lower wages than it pays other employees, puts her in a more crowded dormitory room, and serves her leftover food in the company cafeteria. Parents of a young woman making wedding arrangements suddenly tell the couple they are now irrevocably opposed to the marriage, having discovered the birthplace of the groom-to-be. A successful businessman changes his name and his permanent residence to conceal that same birthplace from his employees and customers. While first-generation Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants faced such discrimination in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century America,1 Japanese citizens from Okinawa Prefecture have encountered it more recently on Japan’s mainland. (For convenience , I will hereafter follow the Okinawan convention of referring to the main islands of Japan as “mainland” [hondo].) When the Japanese government abolished the Ryukyu Kingdom, absorbing it into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879, most Okinawans on the mainland were merchants of locally grown and manufactured goods. Largescale migration began around 1900 with the development of Japan’s modern textile industry, centered in Greater Osaka. Thousands came from the nation’s most impoverished prefecture, mostly young women and teenage girls from farming villages, to work under contract in factories. Most stayed temporarily, typically for three years, often working and living in oppressive conditions, and sending a portion of their wages back to help support their families. A sudden demand for labor throughout Japan during World War I brought more Okinawans to the mainland. While many worked in factories or on construction sites, others came to study, then stayed to launch 2 | Introduction careers as teachers, physicians, attorneys, government employees, or entrepreneurs . By 1925, approximately 20,000 lived there, about half in Greater Osaka. The largest migration occurred during another labor shortage after Japan’s military incursions in China escalated to full-scale war in 1937. By 1940, a recorded 88,319 Okinawans—about 15 percent of the total population of Okinawa Prefecture itself—lived on the mainland.2 Responding to discrimination and a need for networks of mutual support, they had begun forming residential communities in the industrial sections of Osaka and other manufacturing cities. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, restrictions imposed during the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa from 1945 to 1972 made travel to and from the mainland difficult, especially in the early postwar years. American military rule in Okinawa, which dragged on twenty years longer than the Allied occupation of the mainland (1945–1952), required residents to obtain travel permits that were issued or denied after sometimes lengthy investigations. Nevertheless, many traveled to the mainland for work or attended colleges there, some on scholarships from the U.S. or Japanese government. When the mainland’s “miracle” economy took off in the late 1950s, employment agents recruited Okinawans, mostly recent high school graduates, in “group hirings” to fill a growing labor shortage in factories and small businesses. It was a time when Okinawa’s underdeveloped economy, still heavily dependent on American military projects and purchases, offered few good jobs. However, those who traveled to the mainland for work were often exploited by unscrupulous recruiters and employers, and many encountered prejudice. After travel restrictions ended with Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, more people went to the mainland for work and study. Some settled there, but most returned to Okinawa even though it offered fewer employment opportunities. Although precise figures are unavailable, a survey conducted in 2000 estimated that 70,000 migrants and their descendants resided in Osaka Prefecture, mostly in Osaka City; 12,000 in Hyōgo Prefecture, mostly in Kobe and Amagasaki Cities; and 45,000 in Kanagawa Prefecture, mostly in Yokokama and Kawasaki Cities, for a combined figure of 127,000 in those three prefectures. While there is considerable movement back and forth, the total number of Okinawans currently residing on the mainland has been estimated at 300,000, between 20 and 25 percent of Okinawa Prefecture’s 1.3 million population.3 Although fewer now live in what have been called “ethnic communities,” many maintain close connections with other Okinawans on the mainland.4 Like minorities elsewhere...

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