Akina : An Ecocultural Portrait of an Island Community through the Photographic Lens of Futoshi Hamada

In this photo essay, we take you on a visual journey to Akina Village in Amami Ōshima, Japan, through the work of Futoshi Hamada, an award-winning island photographer and ecologist. Based on the artist’s Mura (2001) photographic work that documented the natural cycle of the village’s rice cultivation and the harvest festivals associated with it, we aim to explore the concept of the island’s ecocultural identity as it manifests through the artist’s and the community’s unique connection with the island nature and culture. As Akina is the last remaining village on the island where rice cultivation is still taking place, and linked to the harvest festivals, the visual documentation of these practices provides us a rare glimpse into what was once an integral part of Amami’s natural, socio-cultural, and spiritual/animistic islandscape before sugarcane was imposed on the islanders by mainland Japanese agricultural interventions and impositions

Sotetsu heritage: cycads, sustenance and cultural landscapes in the Amami islands

This article addresses the cultural heritage and, thereby, socio-historical perception of the sotetsu plant (cycas revoluta)1 in Tokunoshima, the Amami islands and the broader Ryukyu archipelago of southern Japan. The article addresses the plant’s function as an emergency/resilience food resource, a field windbreak, a defining feature of a particular ‘cultural landscape’ and a potent symbol within Ryukyu history. While the Amami islands are (now) part of Japan, the article views them from a Pacific history viewpoint, as an underdeveloped archipelagic annex to a major, densely-populated regional power and whose use of botanical and other primary resources has much in common with the islands of Oceania, not the least in terms of the “derivative vulnerabilities” (Lewis, 2009) arising from Amami’s history of colonial disruption and economic exploitation. The discussions advanced in the article engage with the sotetsu’s nature as a food source, a progenitor of related ‘foodways’ and its complex role in the cultural landscape and heritage of the Amami islands and, in particular, southern Tokunoshima. The concluding section considers the heritage value and context of the plant and of the distinctive hedged ‘fieldscapes’ within the context of contemporary economic development

Retaining Shima in Shima Uta: music as mnemonic expression of heritage in contemporary Kakeroma

The music culture of the Amami islands of southern Japan is a distinct regional form that constitutes an important element of contemporary Amami identity. This local music tradition is most strongly represented by the form of song known as shima uta. Our paper explores aspects of shima uta with substantial reference to the characterisations and interpretation of the nature of shima offered by Jun’ichiro Suwa in v1 n1 of Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, published in April 2007. Our intention is to illustrate the temporal transition and reformulation of aspects of shima sensibility in the late 21st Century, drawing on our field research in the Amami islands in mid-2006 and subsequent analysis

Neo-Traditional ensemble drumming in the Amami Islands : mapping new performance traditions

This article maps neo-traditional drumming in the Amami islands. Over the past two to three decades, a number of ensemble drum groups have emerged throughout the Amami islands. These drum groups cover three main styles of drumming: eisā, wadaiko and shimadaiko. With influences from Okinawa, mainland Japan and Amami respectively, and acknowledging that cultural flows are sometimes more complex, such styles of performance have captured the Amamian imagination and have been adopted by many community and school groups alike. This article maps the breadth of such drumming by classifying the performance styles across the Amami islands, while also exploring ideas pertaining to how and why these new styles of performance have gained in popularity in the Amami context

Takarajima: a treasured island: exogeneity, folkloric identity and local branding

This article examines the manner in which local identity can be constructed on small islands from the selective prioritisation and elaboration of exogenous elements that become localised by this process and can subsequently function as a brand within contemporary tourism markets. The particular analysis of identity motifs on Takarajima island that we expound examines aspects of the relationships between folklore and contemporary media and references contemporary debates concerning archaeology’s interface with folklore and popular culture in the context of (non-scientific) ‘treasure hunting’