Where King Tacos meets tofuyo and taco rice, and US military bases rub up against Chinese tourists: This is Anthony Bourdain in Okinawa, almost ten years ago to the day.
It’s a measure of Anthony Bourdain’s power as a storyteller, not to mention that he’s remembered after all this time, that even an off-the-cuff episode like Parts Unknown’s sixth-season outing to Okinawa has one commenter on Reddit saying that it made him want to go there.
It also says a lot for Bourdain that he found something interesting and little-known to say about a foreign land that has seared itself into the consciousness of a generation of Americans and others who fought in the Pacific toward the end of the Second World War. As Bourdain recounts in an episode that is by turns gripping, emotionally wrenching and oddly whimsical in parts, a history lesson reimagined as a cultural, sociological and culinary take on an enigmatic, often misunderstood corner of the world.
As Bourdain recalls, early in Okinawa, a U.S. invasion fleet of nearly 1,500 ships, a landing force of 182,000 combatants — 75,000 more than Normandy — approached Okinawa on April 1, 1945.
April 1945. Think about that. In Europe, Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, just five weeks later. Imperial Japan would sign the official “Instrument of Surrender” four months after that, on Sept. 2 of that year.
The battle for Okinawa was hard fought, and terrible.
Bourdain reminds us in his voiceover that what came next was what Okinawans called ‘The Typhoon of Steel.’ Having island-hopped across the Pacific, Allied forces saw Okinawa as the key base from which to stage air operations and ready a landing force for the final push into the Japanese mainland and V-Day in the Pacific.
“The fighting was brutal for both sides. The cost of lives and resources for the Allied forces was tremendous. And, when it was over, military planners looked at the mainland, looked at what Okinawa had cost them, and projected even more appalling losses. What came next, we all know.”
That one line, for me, perfectly explains what separated Bourdain from the countless other travel documentarians out there: “What came next, we all know.” He didn’t feel the need to explain what happened. He took it as a given that his audience—those of us who watched his programs, rapt with attention and marvelling at his stories—were, and still are, smart enough not to be spoonfed every little detail.
“What is not widely known,” Bourdain continued — and this is another Bourdain tell, that he frequently/often/always told us things we didn’t know — “is that more people died during the battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
There are more things we didn’t know, or at least that I myself didn’t know before watching Okinawa: that Okinawans are a separate people with a separate language, culture, cuisine and history to mainland Japan, always subservient and kept under the thumb of their larger, more traditional neighbour to the north. And during the war, Okinawans, the majority of them civilians — men, women, and children alike — paid a terrible price for being caught in the middle, an accident of geography, a footnote in history were it not for people like Bourdain who take those familiar, taken-for-granted words from Remembrance Day (the UK, Canada) and Memorial Day (the US), “Lest we forget,“ and imbue them with genuine meaning.
This is Bourdain, though, with all the wit, passion, and acerbic observations and observances we’ve come to know and expect — and enjoy — from his best work throughout Parts Unknown’s 91 hour-long episodes over 12 seasons and six years.
Bourdain: “Okinawa is a place with a fighting tradition—a history of ferocious resistance, but it’s nothing like what you might think. Not at all.”
“For all the relative rigidity of the mainland, Okinawa answers in its own unique way. Don’t eat the same thing each day. That’s boring. There’s even an Okinawan term for it, chanpurū, something mixed—bits borrowed from all over, served up for anyone to eat.”
And the playful side. This, during a martial arts (karate) exhibition:
“I’m not accusing anyone of gambling” — illegal, or shall we say “quasi-legal” in Okinawa — “but, um, I see some money changing hands.”
And the food:
“In Okinawa, pork is king. OK, they’ve got tofu, too.”
To one of the local fixer/handlers/restaurateur/chefs who share their family histories with this tall, upstart visiting American with the shock of white hair and a mouth to match:
“Your mom would’ve been like a hipster hero.”
Karate and puffer fish!
Yes, but what of the future? As anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of the news headlines knows, Okinawa is home to 30,000 US servicemen and women anchored on several of the largest, most prominent US military bases in the Pacific, casting an increasingly wary — and perhaps nervous — eye toward mainland China.
Toward the end of the hour, Bourdain breaks bread, in a manner of speaking, with Tetsuhiro Hokama Sensei (born 1944, not a terrific year to be born in that part of the world), chairman of the Kenshikai Goju-Ryu karate group, and Vivian Takeuchi, a local who has lived in both the U.S. and Okinawa. Takeuchi’s aunt, Sumiko, was an entertainer who sang at American military bases after the war.
“Okinawans may be easygoing and laid back,” Bourdain says, “but the island is also a relative hotbed of political activism, largely inspired or provoked by what Okinawans see as high-handed treatment from a central government with different cultural and historical traditions, who do not consider their needs or priorities. (Not to mention) their disproportionate shouldering of the U.S. military presence for the entire country. There are close to 30 “military installations” on Okinawa, and even though it is one of the smallest Japanese prefectures in terms of livable area, the bases account for more than half of the foreign military presence. Even more problematic, Bourdain notes, much of Okinawa's arable land suitable for farming on an island whose whole traditional identity was built around farming is being eaten up by military bases.
Everything is relative, though.
“Tourism is probably the future of Okinawa,” Bourdain tells Takeuchi at one point. “You have beautiful weather, beaches. If the bases leave, it is going to be big hotels and resorts and golf courses.
“Which is worse? Chinese tourists or American Marines?”
Takeuchi considers the question for a moment, weighing military bases against Chinese tourists and the inevitable gentrification of hotel complexes and credit card swipe machines unchecked tourism would bring, and smiles ruefully.
“I will stick with the Marines,” she says, and Bourdain laughs.
There it is.
As James Pankiewicz, Brit expat, black belt in Shōrin Ryū karate and translator for many of the karate sensei on the island, tells Bourdain: “They are saying, please eat. Less talking, more eating.”
Better than the alternative, as always. Life is about compromise, after all.
Supplementary reading:
https://medium.com/parts-unknown/ryukyu-f7569582bbeb
https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-okinawa/
https://visitokinawajapan.com/discover/food-and-longevity/okinawan-food-culture/
CNN