On October 22, at the Komaba Campus of the University of Tokyo, the Society for the Studies of Nation Issues held the Fourth Special Lecture in its series "Thinking About Ethnic and National Questions," "Okinawa and Taiwan: Freedom and Peace at the Border." The speakers were Ms. Sorane Sakihama (Keio University Law School), who is from Okinawa and continues to campaign for revision of the Japan–U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, and Mr. Liu Yen-fu, a journalist at Toyo Keizai Inc. who is from Taipei. On two regions that, amid talk of a "Taiwan contingency," are spoken of side by side only in the context of security, people directly concerned talked with each other.

What Ms. Sakihama stressed first was the reality that Okinawa is still made to bear an excessive burden of bases. About 70 percent of U.S. military bases in Japan are concentrated in the single prefecture of Okinawa. Why must Okinawa alone bear such a burden? That question was also directed at the audience, including the writer, who lives in mainland Japan. Ms. Sakihama said that without the bases, Okinawa would have room for further economic development and growth.

According to Ms. Sakihama, even in the recent prefectural gubernatorial election, won by the conservative Mr. Koja, residents' attitudes toward Henoko cannot be neatly divided into for and against. There are people who do not support the construction of the base but feel they have no choice but to reluctantly accept it. This is also a warning against believing one understands Okinawa from election results and opinion-poll figures alone.

Mr. Liu, for his part, spoke about the situation on the Taiwanese side. Taiwan, too, was home to the largest U.S. military base in Asia until the severance of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Republic of China. However, under Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorship the base issue was covered up, and today's young generation knows almost nothing of that history, he said.

In addition, young people in Taiwan themselves serve in the military under conscription. The environmental standards imposed on the national army's bases are also strict, and precisely because the military and bases are close at hand, the "base burden" that the people of Okinawa protest against is hard to grasp intuitively in Taiwan. It became clear that, although placed on the same border, the two differ in experience and perception.

The discussion also extended to the "southwestern shift" of the Self-Defense Forces. Unit deployments are advancing, centered on the Sakishima Islands, but the facilities will in effect be shared with the U.S. military. The question was raised whether this is anything other than an increase in the base burden.

Doubts were also expressed from a security standpoint. Considering that the islands lie within range of Chinese missiles, there is little need to concentrate bases in the Ryukyu Arc. Should we not rather call for their relocation to mainland Japan? That was the argument. It was also pointed out that, although the discussion has not been exhausted, the concentration of bases in the Ryukyu Arc is being pushed forward as a foregone conclusion.

Participants in the audience also made remarks grounded in history. From long ago, developments in the outside world reached Ryukyu before Japan. With the arrival of firearms at Tanegashima and of the Black Ships alike, Ryukyu had sensed the change beforehand, and only afterward did it reach Japan. The southwestern shift, too, began ten years before the current major military buildup. Had people been watching Ryukyu, they would have understood much sooner the upheaval reaching mainland Japan. It was a reasonable point.

What the dialogue brought into view was the lack of exchange between Taiwan and Okinawa. Though they are neighbors placed on the front line of the same "contingency," their positions and experiences are not sufficiently shared with each other. I, the writer, as someone from mainland Japan, was also made to reflect that I had not been thinking about things from the perspective of the people directly concerned in Okinawa and in Taiwan.

Is it the right way to conduct politics to sacrifice some place on the grounds that "it can't be helped, for the sake of security" or "it can't be helped, to protect Taiwan's freedom"? I keenly felt the importance of not being self-centered and of beginning by first listening to the voices of the people who live in that place.