Saving Katoku: A Case Study of the Conflicting Environmental and Economic Demands on Japan’s Island Communities

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic research from Amami Ōshima, southern Japan, this paper documents the ways in which contemporary societies, from the hamlet to the nation state, are wrestling with opposing forces of environmental and economic sustainability and discusses the fractures this creates for people and ecosystems. It uses as a case study the protest to stop the construction of a seawall being built in Katoku, an ocean hamlet in Amami, based within the buffer zone of the island’s United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Natural Heritage Site. Rather than being built with the primary aim to protect “people and property,” I suggest this infrastructural intervention is a symbolic declaration of risk management and repository of huge economic value for the island and prefecture. The background to the paper is the return of a cache of color photographs taken by an American anthropologist in the 1950s and the 70th anniversary of the reversion of Amami in 1953 from US military to Japanese control. The paper considers the contemporary ramifications of policy instituted in the post-World War II period, that has sought to maximize the potential of “remote” areas and continues to favor growth and development at the expense of the health of multispecies island communities.