Throughout the 20th century, Okinawan Studies have exerted deep-going influence on the development of Japanese ethnology, cultural anthropology and folklore studies. During his field-tour through the island chain in 1920/21, Yanagita Kunio, pioneer of Japanese Volkskunde, formulated his much acclaimed hypothesis of a southern origin of the rice-cultivating culture he conceived to be the core of Japanese culture.
Orikuchi Shinobu was impressed by the rituals of "visiting deities" (marebito) he observed in Yaeyama, comparing them to ancient Japanese rites and customs, while Oka Masao at the same time conceived such beliefs to be cultural traits of a pre-rice-cultivation culture-stratum and incorporated them in his complex theory of different culture-layers in ancient Japan.
The pre-eminent role of the culture of the Southwestern Islands, within the theories pertaining to the origin and early history of the Japanese people and culture, prevailed up to the end of the century. Studies in slash-and-burn culture in northern Okinawa by Sasaki Kômei were incorporated in the discussion of a culture of the 'shining-leaf forest' formulated by Umesao Tadao and others.
Japanese Rural Sociology was deeply impressed by the formulation of a bilateral kinship-organisation in Amami by Gamo Masao and others during the first Amami-Research Project of the Association of Nine Learned Societies. Again, studies in the world-view and religious concepts of Japan were shaped by the "discovery" of shamanism in Okinawan religion by Bill Lebra and Sakurai Tokutarô which lead to a boom in studies in shamanism, Daoism, Feng-shui, occultism and other "Asiatic" traits within Japanese culture. On the other hand, Harada Toshiaki made use of field-reports by Sumiya Kazuhiko and Josef Kreiner in formulating his exciting theory of a "monotheistic" base of Japanese folk-religion.
Bus as important the role of Okinawan Studies has been, it was always directed towards the description of Japanese culture as a whole and conducted by scholars of mainland Japan. Okinawa was not the main object of focus. I hope that this will change with the further development of Okinawan Cultural Studies by Okinawan scholars.
