Imagining the Space of Yonaguni Island: A Folkloric and Geopolitical Enquiry

Abstract

This study investigates geographical imaginations as they have emerged on Yonaguni Island. Yonagunijima is a small island located in the south-west of the Ryukyu Archipelago, 110 kilometers from the Taiwanese coast. Despite its surface approximately covering only 28 square kilometers, folk stories on its creation relate how the current size of the island is the result of the heartfelt prayers that the first inhabitants of Yonaguni directed to the gods, asking them to stretch the little patch of land in the middle of the ocean on which a first family had settled, so that it could accommodate their growing tribe. From this folkloristic point of view, Yonaguni is not small at all. As the vignette above exemplifies, there is more to space than geographical data. This study departs from the basic assumption that space is as much real, concrete and material as it is imagined, abstract and metaphorical, and that different assumptions about space entail different consequences. In this sense, the geographical materiality of each space, including Yonaguni, is coated with layers of what will be termed “geographical imaginations”, defined here as “the ways that humans view, represent and interpret spaces both real and imagined”. If we maintain these core assumptions, it becomes relevant to reflect on how a particular space has been imagined and what these imaginings have implied. Based on the analysis of two different kinds of sources, folkloric and geopolitical accounts on Yonaguni, the aim of the present work is to the expose explicit and implicit imaginaries of Yonaguni Island as space.