Research of making process of regional identity and articulation of folk geography : a case study of Ryukyu islands

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This study examines the making process of regional identity and the articulating process of folk geography. Research field is set in the Ryukyu islands. I examined the concept of "Kyodo (homeland)" as the base of regional identity, at the first, in terms of thinking two aspects of it. One is the historical process of formation and another is its contemporary deployment. In mid 1900's, Ministry of Interior took the lead of "the reformation movement of rural areas". This is the very starting point of formation of "Kyodo" concept. While the academic interests in "ways of life" or "folk" affairs of rural areas became prominent in 1930's, Ministry of Education took the lead of the movement of "Kyodo" education and institutionalized study of "Kyodo" in elementary education. Education of "Kyodo" aims to chant the praises of affection to accessible living environment and make a module to invoke them, and to expand spatial scale of that module in continuity from there, then to cultivate affective sense of attachment to nation-state and national territory under imperial regime. I illustrated, here, its mechanism which goes over work operation of formalization and embodiment of affective bond to formal spatial expanse. It is though this moment that folk geography may be articulated. Next, I took a controversy around "Okinawa Initiative", a conservative manifest, in late 1990's as an example of contemporary evolution and examined a context of how regional identities were actualized and called out. As a result, I clarified that it was not only used as a political tool for contention to take hegemony of prefectural administration but also aimed to revise the perspective of history that residents of prefecture had held in common. Finally, I discussed validity of the concept of "folk" today for grasping contemporary condition of folk geography by looking into youth culture.