Wendy Matsumura
Biographic Data
| ID | 1247567 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wendy Matsumura |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wendy |
| FAMILY NAME | Matsumura |
| SIGNATURE | MATSUMURA W |
| AFFILIATIONS | UC San Diego Health System |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Expropriated life, class struggle, and the colonial relation along Okinawa’s fence-line
Never in my worst nightmares would I have imagined that when organizers extended the invitation to give a keynote many months ago, we would still be in the midst of the US-Israel genocide against t...
Waiting for the Cool Moon
Wendy Matsumura examines the history of the colonial projects and violence of interwar Japan while critiquing Japan studies’ participation of the erasure of this history in its study of the formation of the Japanese nation-state
Gabe Masao in Translation
The following section includes an introduction to the work of Okinawan historian Gabe Masao by Wendy Matsumura and Tze M. Loo, along with translations of two of his articles that were previously available only in the original Japanese. First, Matsumura and Loo’s introduction situates Gabe’s work within the historiographical literature on the Ryūkyū kingdom’s annexation by the Japanese state, arguing that although he eschews the word “colonialism”…
From Ryūkyū to Okinawa
The period I call “From Ryūkyū to Okinawa” corresponds almost directly to the Meiji Restoration, the starting point of modern Japan. This article deals with the period from the arrival of Perry (1853), considered to be the beginning of the Meiji Restoration to the enactment of the Meiji Constitution (1889), considered its end point...It covers the transitional period, broadly speaking, from the destruction of the Ryūkyū Kingdom to the establishme…
Isahama Women Farmers” against Enclosure
In July 1954, the US military notified residents of Isahama, Ginowan, in the central part of Okinawa Island, of their evictions from their lands. Despite immediate opposition by residents, the military rejected all appeals on the grounds that this and other evictions were necessary to make the world safe for democracy. Though Isahama’s residents were discouraged by their failure to extract a more favorable outcome from military authorities, their…
Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation
This article argues through an examination of an anti-base struggle that erupted in early 1950 in Isahama, Okinawa that it is necessary to consider the ways that the so-called new imperialism of the post-World War II period required the transformation of social relations, even in places like Okinawa that are regarded as exceptional sites where US bases and facilities operate through the suspension of sovereignty. It asserts that a focus on the ge…
The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present
Reviewed by: The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality by David Chapman Wendy Matsumura (bio) The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality. By David Chapman. Lexington Books, Lanham MD, 2016. xx, 225 pages. $90.00, cloth; $44.99, paper; $41.99, E-book. In The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present, David Chapman traces the histories and narratives of the diverse group of people who settled …
Uneven Development
During the interwar period, Japanese intellectuals and ideologues across the political spectrum looked inward and to the past to locate social relations, aesthetics, rituals, and experiences that distinguished Japanese modernity from its Euro-American counterparts. Many of these attempts to understand the specificity of Japanese modernity operated from an ahistorical conception of social relations in the countryside that neglected the vast transf…
More than the “Wife Corps”
Struggles over social reproduction intensified and took on new forms in Japan during the interwar period, as the state found it increasingly difficult to secure the foundations for the continued accumulation of capital. Landlord-tenant disputes that erupted nationwide in the midst of Japan's post-World War I agricultural recession was one concrete manifestation of these struggles. While the significance of tenant disputes has been analyzed in gre…
Rethinking Japanese Fascism from the Politics of the Household
Debates over Japanese fascism have been framed in the past as an issue of the relationship between the Japanese nation-state qua empire, its political structure, and the ideology of the family-nation. This debate has largely echoed the dominant framing of the prewar Japanese capitalism debate between the Rōnō and the Kōza faction of Marxists who debated the nature of Japanese capitalism and the conditions of readiness of Japanese society for revo…
The Expansion of the Japanese Empire and the Rise of the Global Agrarian Question after the First World War
The Limits of Okinawa
Since its incorporation into the Japanese nation-state in 1879, Okinawa has been seen by both Okinawans and Japanese as an exotic "South," both spatially and temporally distinct from modern Japan. In The Limits of Okinawa, Wendy Matsumura traces the emergence of this sense of Okinawan difference, showing how local and mainland capitalists, intellectuals, and politicians attempted to resolve clashes with labor by appealing to the idea of a unified…
Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation
This article argues through an examination of an anti-base struggle that erupted in early 1950 in Isahama, Okinawa that it is necessary to consider the ways that the so-called new imperialism of the post-World War II period required the transformation of social relations, even in places like Okinawa that are regarded as exceptional sites where US bases and facilities operate through the suspension of sovereignty. It asserts that a focus on the ge…
Isahama Women Farmers” against Enclosure
In July 1954, the US military notified residents of Isahama, Ginowan, in the central part of Okinawa Island, of their evictions from their lands. Despite immediate opposition by residents, the military rejected all appeals on the grounds that this and other evictions were necessary to make the world safe for democracy. Though Isahama’s residents were discouraged by their failure to extract a more favorable outcome from military authorities, their…
The Expansion of the Japanese Empire and the Rise of the Global Agrarian Question after the First World War
The Limits of Okinawa
Since its incorporation into the Japanese nation-state in 1879, Okinawa has been seen by both Okinawans and Japanese as an exotic "South," both spatially and temporally distinct from modern Japan. In The Limits of Okinawa, Wendy Matsumura traces the emergence of this sense of Okinawan difference, showing how local and mainland capitalists, intellectuals, and politicians attempted to resolve clashes with labor by appealing to the idea of a unified…
Rethinking Japanese Fascism from the Politics of the Household
Debates over Japanese fascism have been framed in the past as an issue of the relationship between the Japanese nation-state qua empire, its political structure, and the ideology of the family-nation. This debate has largely echoed the dominant framing of the prewar Japanese capitalism debate between the Rōnō and the Kōza faction of Marxists who debated the nature of Japanese capitalism and the conditions of readiness of Japanese society for revo…
More than the “Wife Corps”
Struggles over social reproduction intensified and took on new forms in Japan during the interwar period, as the state found it increasingly difficult to secure the foundations for the continued accumulation of capital. Landlord-tenant disputes that erupted nationwide in the midst of Japan's post-World War I agricultural recession was one concrete manifestation of these struggles. While the significance of tenant disputes has been analyzed in gre…
The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present
Reviewed by: The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality by David Chapman Wendy Matsumura (bio) The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality. By David Chapman. Lexington Books, Lanham MD, 2016. xx, 225 pages. $90.00, cloth; $44.99, paper; $41.99, E-book. In The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present, David Chapman traces the histories and narratives of the diverse group of people who settled …
Uneven Development
During the interwar period, Japanese intellectuals and ideologues across the political spectrum looked inward and to the past to locate social relations, aesthetics, rituals, and experiences that distinguished Japanese modernity from its Euro-American counterparts. Many of these attempts to understand the specificity of Japanese modernity operated from an ahistorical conception of social relations in the countryside that neglected the vast transf…
Isahama Women Farmers” against Enclosure
In July 1954, the US military notified residents of Isahama, Ginowan, in the central part of Okinawa Island, of their evictions from their lands. Despite immediate opposition by residents, the military rejected all appeals on the grounds that this and other evictions were necessary to make the world safe for democracy. Though Isahama’s residents were discouraged by their failure to extract a more favorable outcome from military authorities, their…
Postwar Reconfigurations of the US Empire and Global Military Occupation
This article argues through an examination of an anti-base struggle that erupted in early 1950 in Isahama, Okinawa that it is necessary to consider the ways that the so-called new imperialism of the post-World War II period required the transformation of social relations, even in places like Okinawa that are regarded as exceptional sites where US bases and facilities operate through the suspension of sovereignty. It asserts that a focus on the ge…
Waiting for the Cool Moon
Wendy Matsumura examines the history of the colonial projects and violence of interwar Japan while critiquing Japan studies’ participation of the erasure of this history in its study of the formation of the Japanese nation-state
Gabe Masao in Translation
The following section includes an introduction to the work of Okinawan historian Gabe Masao by Wendy Matsumura and Tze M. Loo, along with translations of two of his articles that were previously available only in the original Japanese. First, Matsumura and Loo’s introduction situates Gabe’s work within the historiographical literature on the Ryūkyū kingdom’s annexation by the Japanese state, arguing that although he eschews the word “colonialism”…
From Ryūkyū to Okinawa
The period I call “From Ryūkyū to Okinawa” corresponds almost directly to the Meiji Restoration, the starting point of modern Japan. This article deals with the period from the arrival of Perry (1853), considered to be the beginning of the Meiji Restoration to the enactment of the Meiji Constitution (1889), considered its end point...It covers the transitional period, broadly speaking, from the destruction of the Ryūkyū Kingdom to the establishme…
Expropriated life, class struggle, and the colonial relation along Okinawa’s fence-line
Never in my worst nightmares would I have imagined that when organizers extended the invitation to give a keynote many months ago, we would still be in the midst of the US-Israel genocide against t...
Japanese History and Culture (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works)