C Douglas Lummis
Biographic Data
| ID | 247893 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Douglas Lummis |
| GIVEN NAMES | C Douglas |
| FAMILY NAME | Lummis |
| SIGNATURE | LUMMIS C D |
| AFFILIATIONS | 2-B Pearl Mansion, 2–9 Onaka-cho, Shuri Naha-shi, Okinawa 903–0823, Japan |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1946 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
We're Not So Good at Running … But We Still Know How to Sit: On The Political Culture of Okinawa's Anti-Base Sit-In
A vivid close up view from the front lines of the protest by Okinawans and their supporters against construction of a new US Marine Base at Henoko, Okinawa
It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over: Reflections on the Okinawan Anti-Base Resistance
On 14 December, the Okinawa Defense Bureau officially began reclamation work in preparation for the building of a massive US Marine Corps airbase at Henoko, in Northern Okinawa. I use the word "officially" advisedly: they announced it well in advance, with what could almost be called fanfare. The people opposing this base - the folks carrying out the six-day-a-week sit-in at the construction site and the dock where the ships are being loaded with…
On A Firm Foundation of Mayonnaise: Human and Natural Threats to the Construction of a New U.S. Base at Henoko, Okinawa
The reasons for abandoning construction of the new US Marine Corps Air Facility at Henoko in northern Okinawa are many. It tramples on the Okinawan people's anti-war sensibilities; it adds to the already unequal burden on Okinawa compared to mainland Japan and is therefore discriminatory; it will cause more accidents and crimes victimizing Okinawans; it will damage, perhaps fatally, Okinawa and Japan's finest coral garden in Oura Bay (much of whi…
More Reasons Why a New Base Must Not/Cannot Be Built at Henoko, Okinawa
An unofficial translation by C. Douglas Lummis of excerpts from Chapter 5 of Henoko ni kichi wa tsukurenai (A Base Cannot Be Built at Henoko) by Yamashiro Hiroji and Kitaueda Tsuyoshi (Iwanami Booklet No. 987, 2018). Comments and words added by the translator are placed in square brackets. Three dots indicate sections left out. The purpose of translating just this section is to show that the engineering difficulties faced by the Henoko base proje…
We, the Japanese People: Rethinking the Meaning of the Peace Constitution
From a political perspective, a constitution can be seen not only as a promulgation of basic law, but also as a political act: a seizure of power. Most modern constitutions in the tradition of the Magna Carta (though not those promulgated by dictators) aim to seize power from kings and/or aristocrats and place it under the limits of law. The Constitution of Japan was also such a power seizure, carried out by a short-lived alliance between The US …
Radical Democracy
C. Douglas Lummis writes as if he were talking with intelligent friends rather than articulating political theory. He reminds us that democracy literally means a political state in which the people (demos) have the power (kratia). The people referred to are not people of a certain class or gender or color. They are, in fact, the poorest and largest body of citizens. Democracy is and always has been the most radical proposal, and constitutes a cri…
An Afghan Okinawa
Reading this beautifully written appeal from the Afghan Peace Volunteers is like hearing, amid the drums and trumpets of war, the delicate sound of a flute. What is heartbreaking about the Afghan struggle is that none of the main contenders we hear about - the Karzai government, the U.S. military, NATO, the Taliban, al Qaeda - seems capable of hearing that sound. An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, and the whole world goes blind. A bomb for a bomb, i…
Henoko Has a Few Words for the Pentagon - an Okinawan ex-Marine Speaks Up
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Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
To Japan and to the world Japan is a democratic country, in which popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) are assured. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has repeatedly told international fora - including the US Congress and the UN General Assembly - that such is the case. But what is evolving now in the course of confrontation between the Abe government and the people of Okinawa, led by their Go…
Okinawa: State of Emergency
February 10, 2015: Outside the gate of the US Marine Corp's Camp Schwab at Henoko in northern Okinawa a sign announced that this was the 220th day of the sit-in there. Next to it stood an elderly man holding a flag bearing the words, DO NOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OKINAWANS. He told me he had not been given it by any organisation, but had had it made with his own money. "This is it", he said to me urgently. "This is the issue
The Bus to Henoko: Riot Police and Okinawan Citizens Face-off over New Marine Base
Naha, Okinawa, 17 January. Yesterday I took a bus up to Henoko from Naha, where I live. There is a new organisation called Shimagurumi Kaigi, formed to support the newly elected Governor in his "all Okinawa anti-base" campaign. Since "all-Okinawa" includes progressives, pacifists, business people, and politicians who recently broke away from the pro-base Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they will, I hear, need to do a whole lot of talking among th…
It Would Make No Sense for Article 9 to Mean What it Says, Therefore It Doesn't. The Transformation of Japan's Constitution
There is a rumor in Japan that Aso Taro, former Prime Minister and present Deputy Prime Minister, never reads real books but only cartoon books: manga. It is said that when he was PM he kept a stash of these in the back of his official car so he could read them going to and from meetings and other duties. If these rumors are true, they would go a long way toward explaining his recent gaffe. On 29 July this year, speaking before an ultra-rightist …
An Afghan Okinawa
Reading this beautifully written appeal from the Afghan Peace Volunteers is like hearing, amid the drums and trumpets of war, the delicate sound of a flute. What is heartbreaking about the Afghan struggle is that none of the main contenders we hear about - the Karzai government, the U.S. military, NATO, the Taliban, al Qaeda - seems capable of hearing that sound. An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, and the whole world goes blind. A bomb for a bomb, i…
Three Messages from Okinawa
This might be one for the Guiness Book. On April 19, 2014, a ceremony was held at the fishing village of Henoko, in Nago City, Okinawa, marking the tenth anniversary of the continuous sit-in by residents and supporters opposing the construction of a new U.S. Marine Corps Airbase there. Actually it's seventeen years since the U.S. and Japanese governments announced that the USMC Airbase at Futenma, in crowded Ginowan City, would be closed, or rath…
The Great Betrayal
December 27 will be remembered as a bitter day in Okinawan history. On that day, Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu cast aside his campaign promises, his statements made repeatedly during the last three years, and his duty as Governor to represent the Okinawan people's will, and approved the Japanese governments' application for permission to begin reclaiming land offshore from Henoko in northern Okinawa, on which to build a new US Marine Corps ba…
The Madman Strategy
While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damage that we would find unacceptable, we should not be too specific about our responses. Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US might do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool - headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially "out of control" can be b…
The Proposal to Build a Nuclear Power Plant in Tokyo and to Move the Futenma Base from Okinawa to Mainland Japan
Just over thirty years ago the anti-nuclear power activist Hirose Takashi (who I knew because we frequented the same coffee house in Tokyo) said to me, "I have converted to the other side. I am writing a book arguing that nuclear power is safe after all." He smiled to see how startled I was, and then went on. "Nuclear power is perfectly safe, right? That means there is no reason to build nuclear power plants in such far-away places. Building all …
The United States and Terror on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11
11 September 2011 marks ten years since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC. However, I would also like to call attention to the date, 20 September, which marks ten years since the United States entered its present condition of perpetual war. It was on 20 September 2001 that then U.S. President George W. Bush declared the opening of the "war on terror
The Innocence of Evil: Reflections on War and the Battle of Okinawa
World War II produced many great villains, but as for the supreme Monster, many would award that dishonor to Adolph Eichmann, the man who administered the deaths of six million Jews, and who made "I was only doing my job" into an expression laden with bitter irony in the post war world. Hannah Arendt, after attending his trial in Israel, shocked the world by announcing that she found him to be not a Monster at all, but rather a Nobody - or worse …
I Lost My Only Son in the War: Prelude to the Okinawan Anti-Base Movement
The following is a translation of parts of Chapters 1 and 2 of Ahagon Shoko's Beigun to Nomin (GIs and Farmers) (1973, Iwanami Shinsho). It describes the beginnings of the struggle between the farmers of Iejima (a small island just off the main island of Okinawa) and the US military which was trying to confiscate their land. Ahagon's memory is revered in Okinawa as the leader of that movement, though he denied that he played that role
The Smallest Army Imaginable: Gandhi's Constitutional Proposal for India and Japan's Peace Constitution
In 1931, on his way to the London Round Table Conference, Mahatma Gandhi was asked by a Reuters correspondent what his program was. He responded by writing out a brief, vivid sketch of "the India of my dreams". Such an India, he said, would be free, would belong to all its people, would have no high and low classes, no discrimination against women, no intoxicants and, "the smallest army imaginable." (2
The US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement and Okinawan Anger. A Debate
This article, and the subsequent exchange with Major Nathan C. Hurst, originated in a symposium on the US global military posture that appeared at Mother Jones. As the article was being posted, we learned that on the night of October 24 another US plane, this time a small Cessna 172 had crashed in Okinawa after clipping high-voltage wires, and burst into flames. The four US airmen on board were reportedly members of a private flying club at Kaden…
Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture: An Exchange
What is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published Douglas Lummis's critique of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese culture.Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis's rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this debate.Ruth Fulton Benedict's intellectual presence is still being felt in the field of comparative cultures and beyond, even though al…
Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture
I first found Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in the Charles Tuttle Bookstore in Okinawa in 1960. I had just decided to spend some time living in Japan (little suspecting that "some time" would turn out to be a big part of the rest of my life) and I was delighted to discover that Benedict, whose Patterns of Culture I greatly admired, had written this book too. I read it avidly, and for some years was corrupted by the myth of (as M…
The Smallest Army Imaginable
This article explores why it is so difficult to imagine a state without an army. It considers Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, conventional accounts of the sovereign state and the right to legitimate violence, Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, Gandhi's Constitution for a Free India, and Gandhi's understanding of the art of the possible. It concludes with a reading of Gandhi and the sacrificial politics of founding in India
Development against Democracy
Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy
Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They can…
Political theory: Why it seems universal, but isn't really
On A Firm Foundation of Mayonnaise: Human and Natural Threats to the Construction of a New U.S. Base at Henoko, Okinawa
The reasons for abandoning construction of the new US Marine Corps Air Facility at Henoko in northern Okinawa are many. It tramples on the Okinawan people's anti-war sensibilities; it adds to the already unequal burden on Okinawa compared to mainland Japan and is therefore discriminatory; it will cause more accidents and crimes victimizing Okinawans; it will damage, perhaps fatally, Okinawa and Japan's finest coral garden in Oura Bay (much of whi…
It Would Make No Sense for Article 9 to Mean What it Says, Therefore It Doesn't. The Transformation of Japan's Constitution
There is a rumor in Japan that Aso Taro, former Prime Minister and present Deputy Prime Minister, never reads real books but only cartoon books: manga. It is said that when he was PM he kept a stash of these in the back of his official car so he could read them going to and from meetings and other duties. If these rumors are true, they would go a long way toward explaining his recent gaffe. On 29 July this year, speaking before an ultra-rightist …
The Smallest Army Imaginable
This article explores why it is so difficult to imagine a state without an army. It considers Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, conventional accounts of the sovereign state and the right to legitimate violence, Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, Gandhi's Constitution for a Free India, and Gandhi's understanding of the art of the possible. It concludes with a reading of Gandhi and the sacrificial politics of founding in India
The Relation of School Attendance to Employment Records, Army Conduct and Performance in Tests
Development against Democracy
Radical Democracy
Radical Democracy
Political theory: Why it seems universal, but isn't really
The Madman and the Sword
At the very beginning of the long dialogue between thinkers that makes up western political theory there is Plato's Republic, and at the very beginning of the Republic there is this strange and interesting exchange. Socrates asks an old man, Cephalus, if he can define justice. Cephalus says, Of course, justice means to tell the truth and to return anything you have borrowed. Socrates then asks, Suppose you have borrowed a sword from a man, and wh…
The Smallest Army Imaginable
This article explores why it is so difficult to imagine a state without an army. It considers Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, conventional accounts of the sovereign state and the right to legitimate violence, Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, Gandhi's Constitution for a Free India, and Gandhi's understanding of the art of the possible. It concludes with a reading of Gandhi and the sacrificial politics of founding in India
Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy
Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy. By Romand Coles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. In 1859, two years after England crushed the Indian Uprising, John Stuart Mill explained why the rules of international morality do not apply to “barbarians”: “In the first place, the rules of international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They can…
Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture: An Exchange
What is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published Douglas Lummis's critique of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese culture.Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis's rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this debate.Ruth Fulton Benedict's intellectual presence is still being felt in the field of comparative cultures and beyond, even though al…
Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture
I first found Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in the Charles Tuttle Bookstore in Okinawa in 1960. I had just decided to spend some time living in Japan (little suspecting that "some time" would turn out to be a big part of the rest of my life) and I was delighted to discover that Benedict, whose Patterns of Culture I greatly admired, had written this book too. I read it avidly, and for some years was corrupted by the myth of (as M…
The US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement and Okinawan Anger. A Debate
This article, and the subsequent exchange with Major Nathan C. Hurst, originated in a symposium on the US global military posture that appeared at Mother Jones. As the article was being posted, we learned that on the night of October 24 another US plane, this time a small Cessna 172 had crashed in Okinawa after clipping high-voltage wires, and burst into flames. The four US airmen on board were reportedly members of a private flying club at Kaden…
The Innocence of Evil: Reflections on War and the Battle of Okinawa
World War II produced many great villains, but as for the supreme Monster, many would award that dishonor to Adolph Eichmann, the man who administered the deaths of six million Jews, and who made "I was only doing my job" into an expression laden with bitter irony in the post war world. Hannah Arendt, after attending his trial in Israel, shocked the world by announcing that she found him to be not a Monster at all, but rather a Nobody - or worse …
I Lost My Only Son in the War: Prelude to the Okinawan Anti-Base Movement
The following is a translation of parts of Chapters 1 and 2 of Ahagon Shoko's Beigun to Nomin (GIs and Farmers) (1973, Iwanami Shinsho). It describes the beginnings of the struggle between the farmers of Iejima (a small island just off the main island of Okinawa) and the US military which was trying to confiscate their land. Ahagon's memory is revered in Okinawa as the leader of that movement, though he denied that he played that role
The Smallest Army Imaginable: Gandhi's Constitutional Proposal for India and Japan's Peace Constitution
In 1931, on his way to the London Round Table Conference, Mahatma Gandhi was asked by a Reuters correspondent what his program was. He responded by writing out a brief, vivid sketch of "the India of my dreams". Such an India, he said, would be free, would belong to all its people, would have no high and low classes, no discrimination against women, no intoxicants and, "the smallest army imaginable." (2
The United States and Terror on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11
11 September 2011 marks ten years since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC. However, I would also like to call attention to the date, 20 September, which marks ten years since the United States entered its present condition of perpetual war. It was on 20 September 2001 that then U.S. President George W. Bush declared the opening of the "war on terror
An Afghan Okinawa
Reading this beautifully written appeal from the Afghan Peace Volunteers is like hearing, amid the drums and trumpets of war, the delicate sound of a flute. What is heartbreaking about the Afghan struggle is that none of the main contenders we hear about - the Karzai government, the U.S. military, NATO, the Taliban, al Qaeda - seems capable of hearing that sound. An eye for an eye, said Gandhi, and the whole world goes blind. A bomb for a bomb, i…
Three Messages from Okinawa
This might be one for the Guiness Book. On April 19, 2014, a ceremony was held at the fishing village of Henoko, in Nago City, Okinawa, marking the tenth anniversary of the continuous sit-in by residents and supporters opposing the construction of a new U.S. Marine Corps Airbase there. Actually it's seventeen years since the U.S. and Japanese governments announced that the USMC Airbase at Futenma, in crowded Ginowan City, would be closed, or rath…
The Great Betrayal
December 27 will be remembered as a bitter day in Okinawan history. On that day, Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu cast aside his campaign promises, his statements made repeatedly during the last three years, and his duty as Governor to represent the Okinawan people's will, and approved the Japanese governments' application for permission to begin reclaiming land offshore from Henoko in northern Okinawa, on which to build a new US Marine Corps ba…
The Madman Strategy
While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damage that we would find unacceptable, we should not be too specific about our responses. Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US might do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool - headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially "out of control" can be b…
The Proposal to Build a Nuclear Power Plant in Tokyo and to Move the Futenma Base from Okinawa to Mainland Japan
Just over thirty years ago the anti-nuclear power activist Hirose Takashi (who I knew because we frequented the same coffee house in Tokyo) said to me, "I have converted to the other side. I am writing a book arguing that nuclear power is safe after all." He smiled to see how startled I was, and then went on. "Nuclear power is perfectly safe, right? That means there is no reason to build nuclear power plants in such far-away places. Building all …
It Would Make No Sense for Article 9 to Mean What it Says, Therefore It Doesn't. The Transformation of Japan's Constitution
There is a rumor in Japan that Aso Taro, former Prime Minister and present Deputy Prime Minister, never reads real books but only cartoon books: manga. It is said that when he was PM he kept a stash of these in the back of his official car so he could read them going to and from meetings and other duties. If these rumors are true, they would go a long way toward explaining his recent gaffe. On 29 July this year, speaking before an ultra-rightist …
Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
To Japan and to the world Japan is a democratic country, in which popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) are assured. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has repeatedly told international fora - including the US Congress and the UN General Assembly - that such is the case. But what is evolving now in the course of confrontation between the Abe government and the people of Okinawa, led by their Go…
Okinawa: State of Emergency
February 10, 2015: Outside the gate of the US Marine Corp's Camp Schwab at Henoko in northern Okinawa a sign announced that this was the 220th day of the sit-in there. Next to it stood an elderly man holding a flag bearing the words, DO NOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OKINAWANS. He told me he had not been given it by any organisation, but had had it made with his own money. "This is it", he said to me urgently. "This is the issue
The Bus to Henoko: Riot Police and Okinawan Citizens Face-off over New Marine Base
Naha, Okinawa, 17 January. Yesterday I took a bus up to Henoko from Naha, where I live. There is a new organisation called Shimagurumi Kaigi, formed to support the newly elected Governor in his "all Okinawa anti-base" campaign. Since "all-Okinawa" includes progressives, pacifists, business people, and politicians who recently broke away from the pro-base Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they will, I hear, need to do a whole lot of talking among th…
Radical Democracy
C. Douglas Lummis writes as if he were talking with intelligent friends rather than articulating political theory. He reminds us that democracy literally means a political state in which the people (demos) have the power (kratia). The people referred to are not people of a certain class or gender or color. They are, in fact, the poorest and largest body of citizens. Democracy is and always has been the most radical proposal, and constitutes a cri…
Political science (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Japanese History and Culture (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Mathematics (6 works)