The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 29 | Number 2 | Article ID 3386 | Jul 19, 2010

1

Preparing Okinawa for Reversion to Japan: The OkinawaInternational Ocean Exposition of 1975, the US Military andthe Construction State　　沖繩の本土復帰をめぐって——1975年沖繩国際海洋博覧会、米軍、土建国家

Vivian Blaxell

Preparing Okinawa for Reversion toJapan: The Okinawa InternationalOcean Exposition of 1975, the USMilitary and the Construction State

Vivian Blaxell

“Everywhere it is machines - real ones, notfigurative ones:machines driving othermachines, machines being driven by othermachines, with all the necessary couplings andconnections.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Japan’s war for empire in Asia had manyendings: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki; the imperial broadcast announcingacceptance of surrender terms, “suffering theinsufferable”; signing of the surrenderinstrument on the deck of the USS Missouri;promulgation of a new constitution; the lastexecution of a convicted Japanese war criminal,Nishimura Takuma; American implementationof the Treaty of Peace with Japan; the 1964Tokyo Olympics; establishment of the AsiaWomen’s Fund to compensate the formercomfort women (1995). But no one of thoseendings was more protracted and potentiallymore recuperative of Japan’s view of itself thanthe reversion of the Ryūkyū Islands to Japaneserule on May 15, 1972 after 27 years of directAmerican military control. Reversion did not gouncontested among Ryūkyūans. Memories ofthe entrepôt Kingdom of the Ryūkyūs and itsf i na l annexa t i on by Me i j i J apan i n1879persisted: independence was the

impossible possibility. But the hand of thePentagon had been so stern, so deforming onthe Ryūkyūs,and the realistic alternatives sofew, that reversion to Japanese sovereigntyseemed better to many Ryūkyūans thancontinuing as America’s China Sea militaryoutpost complete with nuclear weapons. Yet, atthe point of reversion and in the 38 years sincereversion, Japanese sovereignty was a mask:the US occupation of the Ryūkyū Islandscontinued undiminished, but now Tokyo andnot Washington paid most of the bill; Japanesesovereignty in post-reversion Okinawacontinued “to be subject to the over-ridingprinciple of priority to the military, that is, theUS military.”1

On the day of reversion, it rained. There hadbeen protests against reversion in Japan and inthe Ryūkyūs, but now there were streetmarches, speeches, celebrations, and anapproaching tide of laws and policies and plansmade by Tokyo, all designed to reterritorializethe Ryūkyū Islands into Okinawa, into Japanesespace, and to give heft to the gauze of Japanesesovereignty. Political reversion entailedterritorial mobility, the U.S.-governed RyūkyūIslands moved, becoming Okinawa Prefectureagain in territory bounded by Japanese title butdominated by American military policy. As partof this movement, Tokyo set aside budget andmarshaled corporate sponsorship for aninternational exposition to be built and held in1975 near Motobu, a very small townon theMotobu Peninsula in the north of OkinawaIsland just a short journeyfrom Nago City.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

2

During the time of the Ryūkyū Kingdom therehad been a collection of villages here. One ofthose villages, Nuwha, is the setting of afamous Ryūkyūan love song still sung today:

伊野波の石くびり

無蔵連れて登る

にやへも　石くびり

とさはあらな

The steep cobbled street of Nuwha

Is very hard

Yet, when walking and talking withmy love

I want it to go on forever

In this nostalgic, relatively remote, provincialplace, in this very local place, Japan builtOkinawa Kokusai Kaiyō Hakurankai; theOkinawa International Ocean Exposition: Expo75. The exposition occupied 1 million squaremeters of land and sea. It hosted the pavilionsof 37 countries. Crown Prince Akihito made aspeech at the opening ceremonies and JamesMichener was the keynote speaker. With itscenterpiece, Aquapolis, Expo 75 celebrated thereversion of the American-controlled RyūkyūIslands to Japanese rule as Okinawa Prefecture.As one Japanese report from the time put it,Expo 75 was integral to shinsei Okinawa-ken,the “reborn Okinawa Prefecture.”2

Expo 75 Opening Day Ceremonies

Expo 75 was a grand affair designed to makethe insubstantial seem substantial, to make anarrow ambit appear broad, and to produceand release the Japanese state and its intimateconnections with capitalism and imperialhistory into the regained prefecture. And giventhe limits of the renewed Japanese sovereigntyin Okinawa, the task of producing andprojecting what sovereignty there was fellheavily on Expo 75. But how are we toapprehend the tasks of Expo 75 in all theircomplexity, connectivity, productivity and, yes,in all their emptiness? World fairs andinternational expositions have been well-studied, variously conceived of and interpretedas symbolic universes ritualizing and affirmingdominant social, economic and politicalorders,3 as pedagogical strategies, models andsets of lessons “of what the future might looklike [and] how it may be brought about”,4 asspectacles imposing hegemonic meanings ontoa depoliticized mass audience5 and asmetaphors for colonial and/or economic ordersof power.6 Each approach tells us somethingabout the operations of expositions and world’sfairs, but not enough. Expositions are morethan materializations of hegemonic discourse;they are more than architectural and visualmetaphors for prevailing relations of power andcapital. Expositions and world’s fairs are morethan themselves.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

3

A Poster for Expo 75

Machinic thinking reveals this more. In whatfollows below, machinic thought is a mode ofthinking about Expo 75 that conceives of it andpulls it apart as machine or machinic device,rather than mechanical device, in the sensethat machine and machinic are conceptualizedin the work of Gilles Deleuze and in Deleuze’swork with Félix Guattari. The advantage ofmachinicas opposed to mechanical thinkingabout Expo 75 is twofold. First, both discourseand techne can be seen together and apart asmachines doing what machines do: production.In this way, machinic thinking recovers theMarxist understanding of machines asconstantly multiplying agents of capitalistproduction and enslavement, but by takingmechanical devices as at once techne andabstraction, and discourse as both techne andabstraction, machinic thinking evades theproblem posed to agency by metaphor whilecollapsing the erroneous distinction between

base and superstructure in upon itself. Ideas,capital and the means of production then areall machines composed of machines, and allmachines are both produced by, expressive andproductive of the “social forms capable ofgenerating them.”7 Whereas the one existingstudy of Expo 75 by Tada Osamu8 sees itssubject as a metaphorfor dominant socialforms, a sign of something else, machinicthinking turns Expo 75 into the social formitself.

Machinic thinking also emphasizes the radicalconnectivity and proliferation of machines.Machines are comprised of other machinesconnecting over and over again with still moreexisting machines, and with time and space, toproduce new machines, which then connectwith other machines. When it comes to thestudy of Expo 75, this idea of machinicconnectivity and proliferation is especiallyimportant for it permits us to understand Expo75 well beyond the abstract and technicalmaterial bounded by its gates and beyond thescholarship of representation and metaphor.Like other Deleuzian machines, Expo 75’s jobwas to aid and abet reterritorializations ofspace, matter and thought through productionand release of social forms that resulted in bothenslavement and subjectification, and it did soby connecting with other abstract and technicalmachines, producing more machines whichacted upon the spatial and social territory ofOkinawa at reversion to vary and mutate it9 inways serving the strictured ambit of Japanesesovereignty. Everything about Expo 75connected with other machines, abstract andtechnical, from the machine of the 1970’sJapanese state in its multiple embraces withdevelopmental capitalism, to the machines ofhistorical memory, landscaping and avant-garde architecture. Through these machinicconnections, Expo 75 produced technocracy,nationalism, religion, knowledge capital anddesign aesthetics in Okinawa in ways that madethe mask of return of the Ryūkyū Islands toJapanese sovereignty seem almost real, seem to

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

4

be the face itself.

The theme of Expo 75 was marine andfuturistic: “The sea you want to see.” There wasa small crack in the mask of Japanesesovereignty here, for in its seemingly innocuoustheme, Expo 75 connected with more seriousmatters and looped around back to the decadesof American military enslavement of Okinawa.Despite Japanese sovereignty, Okinawaremained a linchpin in the Cold War militarystrategy of the United States, a Deleuzian “warmachine.” By 1960, military oceanography andocean exploitation constituted an importantpart of Cold War strategy for both the SovietUnion and the United States, primarily becausethe development of ballistic missile submarinesand the Polaris, Chevaline, Poseidon (US) andR-13 and R-21 (USSR) submarine launchedballistic missiles had reterritorialized the sea asa prime site for intercontinental nuclear strikesand what Paul Virilio might call the absoluteand terrifying peace of nuclear deterrence,mutually assured destruction. The theme alsoconnected Expo 75 with another machine: theinternational political economy of energy andits plans to exploit the oceans as sources ofminerals, natural gas and oil. For Japan inparticular, insular and mountainous, the seapromised solutions to increasing concernsabout burgeoning population and finiteresources, the latter anxiety brought to a headin 1973 when the Organization of ArabPetroleum Exporting Countries imposed anembargo on oil sales. The problems of energysupply and demand drove a substantialproportion of Japanese state policy andeconomic planning. The connection of Expo 75to the energy issue dragged Okinawa into theterritory of Japanese national interest, anhabitual place for the Ryūkyū Islands in bothJapanese discourse and practice since thearchipelago was first defined by Tokyo as thesouthern gate of the modern empire and thusneeding incorporation into the modernizing 19th

century state.

Furthermore, “The sea you want to see”connected Expo 75 with Okinawa and Okinawawith the proliferating and machinic complex ofJapanese tourism. Speaking the language of thesea, Expo 75 was to unite Okinawa and themain islands of Japan as one but moreimportantly, the theme of sea, desire and thefuture was to instate “Hawai’ianization” of theRyūkyūs.1 0 If the Ryūkyū Islands werebecoming Okinawa Prefecture again, OkinawaPrefecture was also becoming something inaddition to a US military base and a Japaneseborder region. It was becoming aoiumiaoisora(blue sea, blue sky), a resort and site ofpleasure for Japanese. The advantages andpossibilities of turning the islands, especiallythe main island of Okinawa, into a simulacrumof resortified Hawai’i, itself a copy of SouthPacific islands and their representations in thecinema, had been discussed since the 1960s,but the American authorities had blocked thissort of Japanese investment in the islands.11 Atthe time of reversion, apart from a few newhotels, some plantings of palms and hibiscus,and improved training of personnel for serviceof the existing beach and war memorial touristtrade, little had been done to turn the Ryūkyūsinto Japan’s Hawai’i. Expo 75 changed that.Tada Osamu describes what he terms acomplete “resortification” of the islandscoincident with reversion from Americanmilitary rule to Japanese sovereignty in 1972and finally delivered by Expo 75.12 Thisproduction of commodity tourism constitutedan important dimension of the mask ofJapanese sovereignty in Okinawa. Beachresorts, ocean landscapes, theme parks andpackaged representations of Ryūkyūan cultureconcealed the facts of the American warmachine and Japanese complicity with it. Partsof Expo 75 looked and functioned like a beachresort and Expo 75 promotional materialsteemed with idyllic images of sun, blue sea andblue skies. From these parts, Expo 75 producedboth other resorts (techne) and the abstractmachine of commodity tourism in Okinawa.Here there was a significant connection with

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

5

massive socioeconomic transformations inJapan resulting from high rates of economicgrowth since the end of the 1950s. By 1975, theJapanese economy was ready for mass-markettourism, for new service industries and forplaces as commodities. And mutating Okinawainto Japan’s own Hawai’iseemed to promisesome solution to Okinawa’s poverty. Itpromised to balance radical economicasymmetry between Tokyo and Naha, whileopening up opportunities for Okinawanbusinesses and addressing chronic localunemployment. The promises went largelyunmet.

In financial terms, many of the actors at Expo75 had also been major players in the JapaneseEmpire before 1945: the government,Mitsubishi and Fuyō Group (formerly theYasuda zaibatsu) for example. The governmentcontributed an estimated ¥180 billion and theOkinawa Ocean Exposition Association, a quasi-government organization, contributed ¥30billion to the cost of building infrastructure.Mitsubishi and other big businessescontributed billions of yen either as cash or astechnology, time and labour. Although most ofthe cost of development and management wasborne by the state and its cohort in bigbusiness, at least one major personality fromthe imperial time made a sizeable contributionto the exposition: the ultranationalist,Sasakawa Ryōichi. Sasakawa’s JapanMotorboat Racing Association and JapanShipbuilding Industry Foundation contributed¥30 billion to the construction and operatingcosts of Expo 75.13 This was a very significantamount indeed, approximately USD$107million and if adjusted to reflect an average USinflationrate of 4.54 percent between 1972 and2009, would now have a purchasing power ofapproximately USD$530 million. And it camefrom the organizations of a man known for hisultranationalist and fascist beliefs and activitiesin Japan both before and after the war, duringwhich latter period he had been arrested as aClass A war criminal for his activities financing

Japan’s war in Asia and profiting from Japanesecolonialism in Manchuria and China.14

The stakes were high and the responsibilities ofExpo 75 manifold. The decision to situate Expo75 adjacent to a small and impoverished villageon a remote and rural peninsula was exemplaryof the functions it was to perform. In its lastyear of office as interlocutor between the USmilitary command and the people of Okinawa,the Government of the Ryūkyūs chose Motobufor Expo 75, but the decision relied on approvalfrom Tokyo.

Motobu made an unl ike ly s i te for aninternational exposition. Previous internationalexpos i t ions had been he ld in ma jormetropolitan areas (Stockholm, Paris, Brussels,New York, Seattle, Osaka, Montreal) or insignificant provincial cities such as Spokane,San Antonio and Naples. But the condition ofMotobu served the main Japanese agenda: thearea’s lack of infrastructure represented asurface on which the Japan that GavanMcCormack cal ls the doken kokka or“construction state”(itself a machine comprisedof machines) could write itself withoutinterruption by building Expo 75 and all thatwas necessary to make Expo 75 possible inOkinawa.

Motobu before Expo 75

By 1975, the impact of two successivecentralized Comprehensive Development Plans

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

6

on industrialization and infrastructure andsocioeconomic formations since 1962 hadproduced a metamorphosis in the Japanesenational space that was nothing short ofastonishing: a high-flying leap toward nationalintegration powered by designated industrialzones, an automating and globalizingautomobile industry, construction of a newstate-of-the-art national communicationssystem, sanitation, television, a cutting edgenational transportation network that includedfreeways and the world’s first super high speedtrain, shinkansen, and the expansion of aconsumer society driven to shop by aconstructed craving for the Three Cs: colortelevision; car; cooler. Expo 75 connected tothe construction state and to the infrastructuraland capitalist machines produced by theconstruction state; itproducedthis high speed,high tech, networked, planned, constructingand consumerizing Japan and released it inOkinawa.

Motobu after Expo 75: Note the MotobuBridge as well as hotels and other

infrastructure on the far side of the bridge,all built for Expo 75

Sakaiya Taichi, head of Japan’s EconomicPlanning Agency and a central figure in theconstruction state, was deeply engaged inplanning for the exposition and he brought withhim to the project the modernizing andtechnocratic assemblage that was the Japanat

the time. Motobu provided Sakaiya, theGovernment of the Ryūkyūs, the Ministry ofInternational Trade and Industry (MITI) andtheir private sector cohorts, Mitsui, Mitsubishi,Hitachi and Matsushita, with an exemplary sitefor production of the state, its meanings and itspowers in Okinawa. Motobu is 85 kilometersfrom the international airport at Naha. Roadshad to be built. Motobu lacked an electricitysupply adequate for the Expo 75 project. A newpower grid had to be built. It lacked thenecessary sewage and water supply facilities.Motobu did not have hotels and inns, livingaccommodations for Expo staff, medicalfacilities and almost every other infrastructuralfacility necessary for such a large project. Ofthe total government funds for Expo 75, ¥72.2billion was spent on widening existing roadsand building the Okinawa Expressway andNational Highway 58.15 Motobu’s populationincreased by approximately 3,000. A bridgewas built across the harbour. The Naha NikkoGrand Castle Hotel, the Okinawa Harbor ViewHotel Crowne Plaza in Naha and numerousother hotels and guest facilities in and aroundMotobu were built with public funds or with thesupport of public funds to service Expo 75. Theinvestment was enormous; though little of thefunds reached Okinawan pockets, the Expo 75project enriched hondo constructioncompanies, but in these ways Expo 75functioned as Deleuzian machines do: itconnected with other machines and reproducedthem in Okinawa and produced new machinesboth technical and abstract — the touristindustry, hotels, Okinawa as Hawai’i, theconstruction state in Okinawa, highways andthe idea of speed, infrastructure, a mutatedtown of Motobu. A coalition of powers —construction state, commodification,government, big business, Sasakawa money —produced Expo 75 to produce themselves inOkinawa and in so doing, enmeshed thereverted prefecture, previously and stillenslaved by American military policy, in thenetworks of Japanese capitalism.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

7

This second enslavement rel ied upondemonstration of what Okinawa did not have asmuch as it relied upon demonstration of whatJapan could do for Okinawa. If Expo 75produced the Japanese construction state andits connections in Okinawa as the substance ofrenewed sovereignty, it also revealed a steepescarpment between the Tokyo plateau and theNaha plateau, an asymmetry with i tsgeneaology in the 19th century, now renewedand over-coded by the site of Expo 75 and byExpo 75 itself. At Expo 75 the recovered tatterof empire and the state came together in apower relation predicated on adisplay oftechnology that simultaneously affirmedTokyo’s postwar and post-1964 Olympicschoices “in the sphere of production and in theconsumption implied by that production”16 andunderlined the failure of Okinawa’s status since1945 when it had been occupied by the UnitedStates. Such asymmetry was most dramaticallyreproduced by the Expo 75 centerpiece,Aquapolis, which is discussed below, but thewhole of Expo, its internal components and itssprawling connections to development,construction and infrastructure, also served toproduce and illustrate the fundamentalimbalance between Okinawa and metropolitanJapan. Sumitomo, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, FuyōGroup, WOS Group, Sanwa, Mitsui andMatsushita all had pavilions at Expo 75. Thesefunctioned as Deleuzian machines function,comprising the larger Expo 75 machine andconnecting to and producing other machines.The architecture of the pavilions tended to befuturistic and technocratic. The displays usedthe latest available technologies, such as videoimaging, computerized displays, multiple giantmovie screens, futuristic sound and movingfootways to present both a corporate version ofthe future and the sea and to foregroundcorporate goods and services that were farbeyond the means of most Okinawans. Japan’sfirst completely automated transportationsystem (AGT) was introduced at Expo 75,17 adriverless people mover built by Kobe Steelthere on the provincial landscape exposing the

dissonance between Okinawa and Tokyo: Japan,powerful enough to make things move bythemselves; Okinawa to be moved on. Even theOkinawa Pavilion accentuated the disparitybetween the archipelago and the main islandsof Japan. Its theme was intended to be local, anarticulation of the importance of the sea inOkinawan history and culture, but by the timethe pavilion opened in 1975, the theme wasmore about showing how the sea hadglobalized Okinawa over the centuries and nowintegrated it with Japan.18 Traditional housingprovided the inspiration for the design of theOkinawa Pavilion, but the final building was solarge, so precise and so modernist in itsconcrete forecourt with fountain and cylindersfor seats that the architectural gesture to thelocal only made traditional housing remarkablefor what it was not, not for what it was. Thetask of the Expo 75 machine was to produce amask of Japanese sovereignty in Okinawa andto generate development. It did both, but theresult confirmed Okinawa’s peripheralcondition. There was both a promise and athreat in the production of the constructionstate in Motobu: this is what Tokyo can do forOkinawa and this is what Tokyo can do toOkinawa.

Expo 75’s productions of the construction statein Okinawa and its Hawai’ianization of Okinawadepended heavily on expurgation. ThreeOkinawan bunkajin (cultural figures) wereselected by the Okinawa Ocean ExpositionAssociation to guide the principles and themesof the Okinawa Pavilion. One of them, ŌshimaTatsuhiro, writer and winner of the 1967Akutagawa Prize, made the following proposalfor the theme of the Okinawa Pavilion:

For Okinawa the sea is both amother blessing us with resourcessince ancient times and a roadbringing culture from abroad.However, for Okinawa, the sea alsorepresents aggressions beginning

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

8

with the inroads of the Satsumadomain in the beginning of the 17th

century, the road to the PacificWar and now the Americanmilitary bases. Is not Expo 75 anopportunity to perhaps recoverthese or iginal meanings ofOkinawa’s seas? 1 9

Ōshima’s proposal met with unanimousapproval from the other members of theassociation but later, the head of theassociation observed that the Americans wereworried that some of the proposed themescould be seen as insinuations (atekosuri 当て擦り) and Ōshima’s proposals were dismissed,thereby establishing the tacit code of themachine that the problems of the Pacific Warand American military bases in Okinawa wouldnot collide with Expo 7520 whilst also exposingthe fictions of Japanese sovereignty in thearchipelago.

And the expurgations multiplied. The expositionsite next to Motobu was chosen in part becauseof its natural beauty. The final design for thetraverses, open spaces and slopes of Expo 75connected to the surrounding area andtransformed the site itself and territories withinvisual range into landscape. Landscapingentailed mutations of territory and territorialmeanings through aesthetic practices. Forexample, the pathways and main plaza of Expo75 were designed to perfectly frame theadjacent small island of Iejima. Landscaping ofIejima mutated territory through a connectionto the shakkei or “borrowed scenery”technique, a method of incorporating a distantvista into the composition of a garden or a city,which is central to Japanese ways of doinglandscape and originated in its Japanese formin the 11th century.

Shakkei is an aesthetic mode of bothdeterritorialization and reterritorialization, onein which the disjunction between inside

territory and outside territory is overcome:outside is brought in and inside migrates out,and it might not to be too much to suggest thatthe practice of shakkei by the Japaneseconstruction state at Expo 75, overcame theinside/outside distinction residual in thesituation of reversion. More specifically, asTada Osamu points out, the perfect view ofIejima designed into Expo 75 aestheticizedO k i n a w a a n d p r e p a r e d i t f o r f i n a lHawai’ianization, a commoditizing territorialmovement necessary for a specific sort of post-reversion Okinawan identity in Japan.21

Here, Expo 75 connected in yet another waythe construction state, tourism, and Japaneseaesthetics with Okinawan time and space, andhere, a considerable mutation occurred, onethat sought to incorporate Okinawa within aJapanese topos through historical expurgation.One of the most savage of the many verysavage battles between Japanese and Americantroops in Okinawa was fought on Iejima in early1945 and resulted in the deaths of around3,500 civilians and Japanese troops. Further,the old Iejima airfield, since replaced by a newand under-utilized airport built for Expo 75,was the point at which Japanese officialscarrying the official instruments of Japan’ssurrender disembarked from Japanese bombersand boarded American military aircraft for theremainder of their journey to the Philippineswhere they met with Douglas MacArthur’s staffat Corregidor. As borrowed scenery at Expo 75,all of this became something else: historyexpurgated and replaced by landscape. That isnot to suggest that local history and itsmeanings did not retain their full cogency whenIejima was viewed from outside Expo 75. And itis fair to assume that Okinawan visitors to Expo75 retained their local literacy when it came toreading the view of Iejima framed by theexposition, despite the fact that it elided notonly the battle for the island but the continuedanti-base struggle waged by Iejima residentssubsequently.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

9

Shakkei: Iejima and Gusukuyama framedand borrowed by Expo 75

Yet, the great majority of the nearly 3.5 millionvisitors to Expo 75 were not Okinawan and forthese visitors (mostly Japanese) the Iejimaproduced by shakkei framing was surelyinnocent of local meanings. The design of spaceand spatial traverse at Expo 75 entailed asignificant attempt at subjectification: visitorsran the risk of seeing things the way themachine wanted them to. It also meant thatIejima’s history and the history of the Japaneseempire underwent a forgetting, a mutation intosomething beautiful, a landscaping of the past.Although Japanese tours of “Southern BattleSites” were commonplace by 1975,22 warmemorials, the glorious imperial war dead andall that they implied about Japan’s defeat andthe dismemberment of its empire, including theloss the of Ryūkyū Islands, were not part of theExpo 75 machine and its enunciations, unlessby omission, the nagging shadow of theunspoken.

The production of Iejima as an expurgatedlandscape also made a refracted connectionback to an older Japanese way of doingcolonialism in the Ryūkyū Islands: the foldingand expurgating of Ryūkyūan religiouspractices and territories of faith. In the late 19th

century, the Japanese imperial-signifyingregime imposed dōka, assimilation, across the

empire. Inserted into colonial Okinawa, dōkaacted machinically to connect to Ryūkyūansociety and culture and to mutate them intonational material. Dōka prohibited someRyūkyūan practices, permitted others,mutating, enfolding, and expurgating asneeded to complete the movement of thepre-1945 territory from Kingdom of theRyūkyūs to Okinawa Prefecture and theextension of Japan to the Ryūkyū Islands.Religion and belief were especially affected.After annexation in 1879, Japanese Shintofolded Ryūkyū shrines and sacred spaces intothe ideals of saiseiitchi, governance by a deifiedruler according to religious rule. Shuri Castle,the sacerdotal center of the Ryūkyū Kingdomand residence of the Ryūkyū monarchs, whowere both political and religious figures, wasleft to decay after the Meiji governmentdeposed the last Ryūkyū king, Sho Tai, and senthim into exile in Tokyo, thereby expurgatingthe political and spiritual meanings of thecastle. In 1925 Tokyo transformed Shuri Castleinto the main Shinto shrine for Okinawa, a dōkaof territory folding the castle into the politico-spiritual regime of the modern Japanese state.23

Borrowing of Iejimaat Expo 75 to produce alandscape for the fictions of Japanesesovereignty both expurgated and foldedRyūkyūan spiritual territory into the Japaneseconstruction state in an operation similar to theways in which dōka had expurgated and foldedRyūkyūan religion and spiritual spaces into a19th century Japanese topos. The view ofIejima from the main avenue and the plaza was,and still is, remarkable for the sharp peak ofGusukuyama, an erosion artifact resembling aweathered mountain. Along with the caves ofSefa Utaki, the l itt le island known asKudakajima and the area around Nakijin Castleon the Motobu Peninsula, the eroded peak ofGusukuyama is one of the most importantsacred spaces in the Ryūkyū Islands, operatingas a guide to Ryūkyūan sailors and as a placewhere people pray for safe voyages, goodharvests and good health: a territory of faith.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

10

B u t w h e n E x p o 7 5 c o n n e c t e d w i t hGusukuyama, matters changed. Distantmountains are the most frequently borrowedscenery for Japanese shakkei landscaping24 andwhere there is not a mountain to borrow, rocksmay be gathered and grouped to representmountains in the garden, or sand may beshaped and packed into the shape of amountain, as at the garden of Ginkakuji in theSakyō-ku district of Kyoto.

Shakkei, Mt. Hiei borrowed as scenery forthe garden at Shoden-ji, Kyoto

The sacred mountain constructed in thegarden at Ginkakuji

The making of mountains in Japaneselandscaping, whether borrowed or constructed,recreates a Japanese territory of faith in the

garden. Mountains possess very substantialspiritual power and significance in JapaneseBuddhism and in Shinto. Shumisen, the cosmicmountain, is at the center of Japanese Buddhistspiritual geography, the core of the universe,and migrated from Hinduism to Buddhism,from South Asian Buddhism to China and fromChina to Japan in the 8th century when NaraPeriod sinification released Buddhism into theland. Just as the sand representation of MountFuji at Ginkakuji recreates a specificallyJapanese sense of the sacred world order in thetemple garden, so too the view of Gusukuyamafrom Expo 75 recruited and folded indigenousRyūkyūan faith into Japanese sacred territory, aJapanese topos, where it became panorama, acog in the reterritorialization of the RyūkyūIslands as Okinawa Prefecture, as Japan and anelement in the claim of sovereignty.

Deleuzian machines not only connect to andproduce other technical and abstract machines,they are comprised of machines. As I haveindicated above, we can see each pavilion andinstallation at Expo 75 as a machine in itself,charged with connections to and productions ofthe social formation from which it came. Butthe most important machine within the Expo 75machine was Aquapolis.

The design and architectural aesthetic of Expo75 owed something to Expo 70 at Osakawhereavant-garde architecture, design andapatina of futurity hadreplaced the exhibits ofmanufactured goods and fabricated ethnicitiestypical of expositions and world fairs in theFordist era. In the view of the Government ofJapan, the success of Expo 70 had owed muchto the involvement of Japan’s Metabolistarchitects, and it was to Metabolism that theExpo 75 managing committee turned for designof the centerpiece of Expo 75: the machineinside the machine. The Metabolists hadvaulted onto the international architecturalscene with a design manifesto presented at the1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo. Theywere especially concerned with the city and

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

11

with urban l i v ing in an age o f rap idtechnological innovation and mass society.Metabolists proposed an architecture for cityliving that could reproduce in techne theorganic transformations nature makes inresponse to changing conditions. Theyconceived of both cities and the buildingswithin cit ies as metaphors of naturalorganisms, built synonyms of living matter,composed of cells that divide, change and diewithin a total body that lives on and develops.In 1960-62 Isozaki Arata designed Clusters inthe Air, a concept for mass housing in Tokyoinspired by trees with the housing units asleaves and the access and service facilities astree trunks and soon designs for metabolic,mutable buildings represented the cutting edgeof Japanese architecture.

Clusters in the Air, Isozaki Arata

The Metabolist building and the Metabolist citywere temporary ensembles, owing somethingt o b o t h t h e B u d d h i s t c o n c e p t o fimpermanence25 and to the Japanese traditionof cyclically disassembling and rebuildingstructures,26 especially sacred structures, yetanswering modern Japanese concerns anddynamics. Metabolist buildings, builtcommunities and cities were to be floatingsystems, material machines that could bedisassembled and reassembled according to thedemands of an age marked by acceleratedtechnological advances, economic developmentand massive urbanization and were designed torespond to the particularly Japanese pressures

of overpopulation and limited land for urbanexpansion. Nomadic buildings. The technicaldemands of such experimental and visionaryarchitecture meant that Metabolist design hadto be deeply enmeshed in technologicalinnovation, wedded to technology itself. Everybuilt Metabolist structure pushed hard at thecurrent limits of engineering and constructionmethods.

For this reason, Metabolist architecture hadboth everything and nothing to do withOkinawa. The design impulse of suchMetabolist buildings as Watanabe Yōji’s NewSky Building in Shinjuku and Kurokawa Kisho’sNakajin Capsule Hotel Tower in Shimbashimaterialized Japan as the construction state,giving built form to the ideals of the time:technological innovation; engineeringsynthesized from multiple applications;rationalized urban living. In these ratherfantastic buildings there is utilitarianism at thetechnical core of the fantasy. There is, too, avisual brutality in their organic forms, animpression of immobility in their supposednomadism apparent in monumentality, visibleengineering effort, modernist geometry. Inview of the technical demands required byMetabolist architecture and its connection withthe problems of dense urban living in Japan, itis not easy to account for it in provincial, ruraland militarized Okinawa. But the decision tohire a Metabolist architectas the signaturedesigner of Expo 75 represents anothermachinic connection, a connection betweenExpo 75, Okinawa, the urbanism of Japan andthe marriage of the nation to technology. Andyet, the asymmetry between capital andtechnology heavy Metabolist architecture andtheory and buildings and life on the MotobuPeninsula also shows us how little Expo 75 hadto do with Okinawa as it was: an impoverishedborder territory, furrowed by decades ofdevastating war, American military occupation,agrarian, and ambivalent about its history andits identity.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

12

New Sky Building, Watanabe Yōji

Nakajin Capsule Hotel Tower, KurokawaKisho

As architect of the Expo 75 centerpiece themanaging committee selected KikutakeKiyonori, a founder of the Metabolistarchitecture movement. Kikutake had designedone of the signature structures of Expo 70 in

Osaka: Expo Tower, which articulatedMetabolist principles in its organic mesh ofsteel scaffolding and viewing/entertainmentpods that could be raised and lowered, evenremoved and added if required.

Osaka Expo Tower, KikutakeKiyonori

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

13

Detail of Osaka Expo Tower,KikutakeKiyonori

In 1958 Kikutake had designed and built hisown home in the Tokyo ward of Bunkyo-ku asan opening declaration of his own Metabolistprinciples paying particular attention to thetechnological challenges posed by mutablestructures. He designed the house as anelevated single large permanent living spacewith kitchen and bathroom and other servicespaces attached to it so that they could bedetached and moved according to his family’sneeds. His children’s bedrooms were attachedto the core living space as capsules that couldbe detached completely from the dwellingwhen the children left home.27 Also in 1958, thegovernment of Tokyo called for plans to copewith the city’s growth. In response, Kikutakepresented drawings and schemata for a floatingcity. The design was not realized but Kikutakepersisted, developing concepts, schemata andplans for floating cities in 1961, two in 1963,1968 and 1971. Here, Kikutake found acreative space in the intersection of Metabolistarchitectural principles with marine cities andhis vision was so visionary, his grasp of theengineering challenges so thorough, that alongwith Buckminster Fuller and Paul Maymont, hebecame a leading figure in what Peter Raisbeckcal ls “one of the more curious minorarchitectural traditions of the 1960’s”: floatingcities.28 In this space Kikutake elaborated avision of nomadic, organically adaptable humanhabitats in previously uninhabitable territorythat offered solutions to postwar Japan’sdi lemmas about l iv ing space and therelationship between technology, change andhuman life. Kikutake’s floating cities weremarine habitats in which human technologyexploited the sea as both resource and livingspace; a rediscovery of smooth space whichwould lead, in Kikutake’s view, to humanhappiness.2 9 His vision was futuristic,technocratic, romantic, impossible. Thetechnology did not yet exist. But there is aconsiderable deterritorialization and its

concomitant, reterritorialization in Kikutake’splans: his designs for floating cities movedhuman habitat from land, striated space, to sea,smooth space, and in that movementdeterritorial ized human habitat andreterritorialized the sea. In his floating citydesigns, the city was radically nomadized, itwas modular and metabolic: not to be anchoredat any fixed point. All or part of it was to beable to cruise to new moorings as necessary ordesired. And at the end of its useful life, thefloating city was to be sunk to the ocean floor,itself a mode of disassembly, nomadicmovement, where it would be reterritorializedas a reef for marine life.

Sketch for floating city, Kikutake Kiyonori1960

Model of floating city, Kikutake Kiyonori,1962

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

14

Floating city, Kikutake Kiyonori, 1971

Kikutake’s record as a Metabolist architectwith a successful structure at Osaka Expo andhis expertise in the principles and engineeringrequired for floating habitats fitted nicely withthe futurist, technocratic and sea themes ofExpo 75 in Okinawa, and he was contracted todesign and build the Expo 75 centerpiece, afloating habitat, a city on the sea (kaijōtoshi)called Aquapolis. Aquapolis was the machinewithin the Expo 75 machine. In Okinawa,Aquapolis provided the engine of Expo 75 anddistilled and producedthe essence of theJapanese construction state and its connectionsto science, technology and big business inOkinawa, promising parity but delivering onlyasymmetry in the already lopsided Japan-Ryūkyū Islands relation. The project wasgargantuan in every way. Nothing likeAquapolis had ever been built before and theobstacles were many, beginning with thechallenges posed by situating a built humanhabitat structure of such size on the sea:

In planning sea space as humanhabi ta t , un ique terms andconditions may arise. First is thepoint that this is new space and sofar we are inexperienced with it.Secondly, the conditions are three-dimensional and it is necessary tounderstand that the space is not

only on the water, at the same timeit is in the water, and moreover,basically movement is immanent inthe space, and due to buoyancythere are special characteristics ofthe built environment. The sea ishorizontal planed space, it iscontinuous space, it is the largestspace on Earth, larger in thesouthern hemisphere than in thenorthern hemisphere.30

Solutions to the obstacles meant that the builtAquapolis bore only a vague resemblance toKikutake’s early sketches and concept art,which evolved as engineering and technicaldilemmas were confronted and resolved.Solutions to obstacles also proved expensive, soexpensive that only the government couldafford the ¥13 billion direct investment in it,but the project was considered so important tothe national interest, additional development,construction and installation expenses wereborne by Japanese businesses.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

15

The evolution of Aquapolis from concept torealization

Although Aquapolis was to float in the sea offthe coast of Okinawa in celebration of theRyūkyū Islands becoming part of Japan again,Okinawa got none of the employment benefits,skills and technology transfer associated withconstruction. Instead, in a decentralizedproduction process, Hiroshima Shipyard andEngine Works, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi HeavyIndustries, produced Aquapolis from partsmanufactured elsewhere and transported bysea to Hiroshima for final assembly and trials.The structure was to be so large that thecompany had to build a new wet dock toaccommodate it.31 After extensive sea trials inthe Setonaikai, tugboats towed Aquapolis morethan 1000 kilometres to Motobu in Okinawa.

Crowds line up to visit Aquapolis at Expo75

Aquapolis

It is almost impossible these days to appreciatethe sheer size of Aquapolis and the mobility ofthat size. Most photographs do not do it justice;only in scenes where Aquapolis rides the oceanbillows caused by the approach of a typhoon inMatsuyama Zensō’s 1976 documentary film,Okinawa Kaiyōhaku (Okinawa Ocean Expo), canwe begin to apprehend the enormity and powerof this floating machine. The 10,000 squaremeters, multiple deck structure weighed15,000 tons and represented the final landingplace of a line of flight begun in the late 1950swith the emergence of a techno-romantic visionof cities on the sea. Aquapolis was constructedas a semi-submersible, welded, cubic structuremade up of decks, lower hulls, columns andbraces. Megafloat technology remained in thef u t u r e a n d s o A q u a p o l i s m o v e d i ncorrespondence with the tides and rough seas.A 250-meter bridge constructed to elasticallywithstand severe climatic and tidal conditionsconnected Aquapolis to the shore. Sixteenpermanent anchors fixed on the seabedtethered the structure at the end of sixteenexpandable chains controlled by motorizedwindlasses. By lengthening or shortening eachanchor chain, it was possible to move Aquapolisa further 200 meters out to sea. Drainableballast tanksalso made it possible to adjustformobility (towing) or for semi-submerged stasis.The lower decks contained a variety of urbanand residential facilities, including a displayarea, a machine room, a dining room, a kitchen,aclerical office and a First Aid room, in additionto a rest, information and telephone area, apost office offering international services,rooms for visiting VIPs and staff officials, acentral control room, a utility control room, acomputer room and a residential area for aboutforty employees. Aqua Plaza on the upper deckfeatured lawns and a heliport.

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

16

Aquapolis from the air

Aquapolis was largely self-sufficient when itcame to energy and one of the world’s firstwaste water recycling processes was testedthere. Once in Aquapolis, visitors could ride amoving footway through three main exhibits, allof them devoted to the sea theme of Expo 75:Marinorama, a static dioramic representationof the primeval ocean; Sea Experience, anobserva t i on ga l l e ry ; Sea Fores t , arepresentation of the flora of the ocean floor.The exhibits were trite, for it was Aquapolisitself that was the attraction and the mainexhibit. Aquapolis was huge, but it was also amuch-reduced realization of Kikutake’s earlierconcepts for floating cities. In his view,however, Aquapolis at Expo 75 was but oneprototypical module of a larger metabolicfloating urban structure to be composed ofother floating and detachable modules linkedtogether on the surface of the sea.32 Theengineering and design of Aquapolis drew on

Kikutake’s fifteen years of research and onadvances in the defense, transport and miningindustries. Aquapolis was the machine at theheart of the Expo 75 machine, intensivelyproductive of Japanese capitalism and thecreative and technological imperatives drivingit. Every part of Aquapolis reproduced thenetworks of Japanese capitalism in Okinawa.For just one example, the 3445 square metertensile membrane canopy on the upper levelalone required new technologies and newstrategies of production involving multiplesectors of the 1970s’ Japanese economy: thedesign skills of Kikutake and his associates;Takenaka Corporation for construction;Shimizu Corporation for canopy engineering;Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for metal andchemical components; Osaka Tents Corporationfor webbing and rigging supplies. In interviews,papers and presentations, Kikutake made apoint of noting how design and construction ofthis new floating city stimulated a previouslyunimagined integration of different sectors ofJapan’s economy, bringing together sciences,technolog ies and methods f rom theshipbuilding, rolling stock, machine and publicworks industries to create a new “humanhabitat industry” as he called it.33 Otherdesigns for floating living, such as Kikutake’searlier project, Unabara, Paul Maymont’sfloating extension of Monaco, BuckminsterFuller’s Triton City project and Thallasopolis I,a floating city of 45,000 designed by JacquesRougerie and intended for the fishingcommunities of the Banda Sea in Indonesia,had not been built: the techno-romantic visionof these architects exceeded the possibilities ofthe technology. And Aquapolis, though hugelyreduced from the grand visions of floatingcities that preceded it, would not have beenbuilt either were it not for the financial andtechnological investments of the Japanesegovernment and big business, Mitsubishi inparticular. This powerful concentration ofpublic funding and private investment is atestament to the importance of Aquapolis (andExpo 75) in the production of Japanese

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

17

sovereignty in Okinawa after reversion.

As Deleuze and Guattari note, “One of thefundamental tasks of the State is to striate thespace over which it reigns, or to utilize smoothspaces as a means of communication in theservice of striated space.”34 The marine themeof Expo 75, itself devised by the state, striatedthe meaning of sea (smooth space) through aspecial abstract machine produced by thesocial formations present in the dominantsignifying regime. And this theme connectedmachinically to the construction state, totechnocracy and produced Aquapolis as itsmost condensed articulation. Tada Osamudescribes Aquapolis as both a symbol andincarnation of the Japanese state and itsgovernment35 but Aquapolis was somethingmore than that: it was the State itself, itsgovernment apparatus and the technosocialformations of that apparatus reproduced asmachine, migrated and installed in Okinawa asa grand, yet essentially futile production ofJapanese sovereignty. It was the state and itsnetwork of cohorts in the technocraticcapitalist economy that made Aquapolis what itwas. And at both the level of enunciation and atthe level of technical operations, Aquapolis wasthe Japanese state and its business: its officialname, Okinawa Kokusai Kaiyō HakurankaiSeifushutten Kaijō Shisetsu, was translated intoEnglish in Expo 75 literature as FloatingPavilion of the Government of Japan. Every nutand bolt, every measurement, construction andoperating standard had been set andadministered to Aquapolis by the stateapparatus itself: the Ministry of InternationalTrade and Industry , the Minis try o fConstruction. All visitors to the structurereceived certificates of Aquapolitan citizenship.There, off the beach at Motobu, Aquapolisstriated the sea with furrows of the Japanesestate and its connections to technology, capital,modes of production and futures, and with thefictions of Japanese rule returned to thearchipelago.

Expo 75 closed on January 18, 1976. It thenmetabolized into Ocean Expo Park, anationalcommemorative site and tourist destinationoffering exhibits such as the Tropical DreamCenter, the Tropical and SubtropicalArboretum, the Native Okinawa Villages,Emerald Beach and the Okinawa ChuraumiAquarium.

Ocean Expo Park

Some of the pavilions fromExpo 75 remain, butAquapolis no longer floats on the sea. It wastowed off to Shanghai to be turned into scrapmetal for an American company in 2000. Itsarchitect, Kikutake Kiyonori, saw Aquapolis offto China and oblivion. “I wanted it to be usedas a research base for an offshore oilfield or asa Black Current research station,” he said asthe material manifestation of his 1970s’ visionsof marine communities and the machinic heartof reversion headed toward the horizon. “Whydid it have to end up a giant piece of scrap?”36

But by 2000, the work of Expo 75 andAquapol is in the factory of Japanesesovereignty in Okinawa was done. The mask ofJapanese control in the archipelago producedby Expo 75 had some success in convincingJapanese at least that the rule of Tokyo wasreal, and Expo 75 also proved to be an effectivemachine for production of Okinawa as anHawai’ian-style resort destination and inreterritorializing Okinawa as part of theconstruction state. But in the end, the peoplewho really needed to be convinced that themask of sovereignty was in fact the actual facewere not, for infrastructure, resorts, mutations

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

18

of landscape and place, and construction failedto conceal the real visage of power fromOkinawans themselves. Just as United States’objections to the proposed theme of theOkinawa Pavilion at Expo 75 determined howthat bui lding and i ts exhibits f inal lymaterialized, so too United States’ permissions,prohibitions, needs and global strategycontinued and still continue to dominate whatand how Okinawa is today. Japan’s sovereigntyin the Ryūkyū Islands is little more than a stageprop for the performances of the American warmachine against which Okinawans continue tofight as they did not fight against Expo 75 andits machinic productions.

Vivian Blaxell researches the spatial, culturaland social practices of Japanese colonialism.She has taught Japanese and Asian politics andhistory at universities in the United States,Japan, China, Australia and Turkey. Currentlyan independent scholar, she runs a globalliteracy consultancy in Australia. She may becontacted at vivian_blaxell@mac.com.

She wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal.

Recommended citation: Vivian Blaxell,"Preparing Okinawa for Reversion to Japan:The Okinawa International Ocean Exposition of1975, the US Military and the ConstructionState," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 29-2-10, July19, 2010.

Notes

1 M c C o r m a c k , G a v a n(http://japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3317). 2010. “The Travails of a Client State: AnOkinawan Angle on the 50th Anniversary of theUS-Japan Security Treaty,” The Asia-PacificJournal , 10-3-10, March 8. For otherdiscussions of the continued dominance of theUnited States in Okinawa after 1972, see fore x a m p l e , Y o s h i o S h i m o j i

(http://japanfocus.org/-Yoshio-SHIMOJI/3354),“The Futenma Base and the U.S.-JapanControversy: an Okinawan perspective,” TheAsia-Pacific Journal, 18-5-10, May 3, 2010.S t e v e R a b s o n(http://japanfocus.org/-Steve-Rabson/3294 ),“’Secret’ 1965 Memo Reveals Plans to KeepU.S. Bases and Nuclear Weapons Options inOkinawa After Reversion,” The Asia-PacificJournal, 5-1-10, February 1, 2010.

2 1973. “Okinawa kokusai kaiyō hakurankai –Expo 75” Tsuchi to kiso, Vol. 21, No, 4, pp.87-89. The Japanese Geotechnical Society.

3 In Robert W. Rydell. 1985. All the World's aFair : V is ions of Empire at AmericanInternational Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

4 Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation ofAmerica: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age.New York: Hill and Wang, p. 209.

5 See Ley, D., Olds, K. 1988. “Landscape asspectacle: World's fairs and the culture ofheroic consumption.” Environment andPlanning D: Society and Space, Vol. 6, No. 2,pp. 191 – 212.

6 For just one example, see Yamaji Katsuhiko,“Takushoku hakurankai to ‘teikoku hantonai noshojinshu’” [The Colonial Exposition and“Peoples of the Empire”], Kansai GakuinDaigaku Shakaigakubu Kiyō, Vol. 97, 2004, pp.25-40.

7 Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. “Postscript on theSocieties of Control.” October, Vol. 59, Winter,p. 4.

8 Tada Osamu. 2004. Okinawa imeeji no tanjō:aoiumi no karuchuraru sutadiizu [Formation ofthe Okinawa Image: Cultural Studies of theBlue Sea], Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha.

9 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1987. AThousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

19

Massumi. London: Continuum, p. 367.

10 Kikutake Kiyonori. 1973. “Kaiyō kaihatsu”[Ocean Development], Kaiyō kaihatsu nomondai: Kenchiku nenpō 1973, ArchitecturalInstitute of Japan, p. 543.

11 Figal, Gerald. 2008. “Between War andTropics: Heritage Tourism in Postwar Okinawa”The Public Historian, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 91-94.

12 Tada Osamu, op. cit., pp. 1-4.

13 This data is taken from the official NipponF o u n d a t i o n L i b r a r y w e b s i t e(http://nippon.zaidan.info/kinenkan/history30/2/2521.html ). Accessed October 20, 2009. TheNippon Foundation was established as theSasakawa Foundation in 1962 by SasakawaRyoichi who also founded the Japan MotorboatRacing Association and the Japan ShipbuildingIndustry Association.

14 On Sasakawa, see for example, Richard J.Samuels. 2005. Machiavelli's Children: Leadersand Their Legacies in Italy and Japan. Ithaca:Cornell University Press, and Karoline Postel-V i n a y a n d M a r k S e l d e n(http://japanfocus.org/-Karoline-Postel_Vinay/3349 ). 2010. “History on Trial: French NipponFoundation Sues Scholar for Libel to Protectthe Honor of Sasakawa Ryōichi,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 17-4-10, April 26.

15 Tada Osamu, op. cit., p. 48.

16 Debord, Guy. 2002. The Society of theSpectacle. Translated by Ken Knapp, p. 2.A v a i l a b l e a s a P D F f i l e h e r e(http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/).Accessed and downloaded October 25, 2009.,

1 7 A c c e s s e d(http://www.archives.pref.okinawa.jp/publication/2009/07/post-228.html) October 21, 2009.

18 Tada Osamu, op. cit., pp. 107-109.

19 Quoted in Tada Osamu, op. cit., p. 105.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid, pp. 72-75.

22 Figal, Gerald, op.cit, pp. 91-94.

23 For a full discussion of the colonial folding ofShuri Castle into a Japanese topos, see Tze M.Loo (http://japanfocus.org/-Tze_M_-Loo/3232).2009. "Shuri Castle 's Other History:Architecture and Empire in Okinawa," TheAsia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 41-1-09, October 12.

24 Accessed (http://www.aisf.or.jp/%7Ejaanus/)March 2, 2010.

25 Pernice, Raffaele. 2004. “MetabolismReconsidered: Its Role in the ArchitecturalContext of the World” Journal of AsianArchitecture and Building Engineering, Vol. 3,No. 2, p. 359.

2 6 S e e t h i s l i n k(http://www.kikutake.co.jp/e/top/top.html ).

2 7 S e e t h i s l i n k ( h t t p : / / s o -il.org/artifact/595). Accessed March 16, 2010.

2 8 Raisbeck, Peter. 2002. “Marine andUnderwater Cities 1960-1975” ADDITIONS toarchitectural history XIXth conference of theSociety of Architectural Historians, Australiaand New Zealand, Brisbane: SAHANZ, p. 1.

2 9 S e e t h i s l i n k(http://parole.aporee.org/work/print.php?words_id=71). Accessed October 19, 2009.

3 0 Kikutake Kiyonori. 1977. “Kaiyō woningenkyojū kūkan to shite toraeru hitsuyōsei”[The necessity of taking the sea as humanhabitat] Kenchiku Zasshi, Vol. 92, No. 1126, p.35.

31 Hoshino Mamoru, Ishida Minoru, NinomiyaKatsuya, and Nishitani Harumitsu. 1976. “A

APJ | JF 8 | 29 | 2

20

Study of Characteristics of World-First FloatingCity Aquapolis” A paper prepared forpresentation at the Eighth Annual OffshoreTechnology Conference, Houston, Texas, May3-6, 1976.

32 Kikutake Kiyonori. 1974. “Kaiyōkaihatsu toAkuaporisu” [Ocean development andAquapolis], Kenchiku Zasshi, Vol. 89, No. 1084,pp. 785.

33 Kikutake Kiyonori. 1975. “Akuaporisukeikakujō no shomondai” [Various problemsregarding the design of Aquapolis] KenchikuZasshi, Vol. 90, No. 1097, p. 798.

34 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,p. 425.

35 Tada Osamu, op. cit., p. 82.

36 Okinawa Taimzu, October 24, 2000.