The Displacement Engine

The Displacement Engine:

How State-Driven Science Extracts from Okinawa (And What to Do About It)

By Mamoru Erina

Volume 27, no. 2, Political Economy of Science

Art by Yuki Murayama
Art by Yuki Murayama

 

In 2001, bureaucrat-turned-politician Kōji Omi, then Minister for Science and Technology and Minister for Okinawan Affairs, proposed a new research university in Okinawa to revolutionize Japan’s STEM landscape. Later named the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), the institute was pitched as a way to bring “world-class science” to Japan’s southernmost prefecture and to stimulate local and national economic growth.

To attract global talent, OIST adopted English as its working language and offered perks rare in Japanese academia: adequate PhD stipends, spacious family housing, and high‑trust funding for Principal Investigators working in ocean‑view labs, free from conventional departments and hierarchies.

OIST’s funding was also unusual. Unlike universities overseen by the Ministry of Education (MEXT), OIST’s budget comes directly from the Cabinet Office via the Okinawa Promotion Budget. As I will argue in the following sections, this positions OIST as an engine that channels the potential energy of political tension into scientific work, harnessed by the Japanese state in support of its alliance with the United States and capitalist interests.

The Okinawa Promotion Budget: Channeling Dissent into Development

The political potential exploited in this configuration has its roots in the ongoing colonization of the Ryukyu Islands. The Ryukyus were forcibly incorporated into Japan from the seventeenth century onward in successive phases of colonization, and suffered catastrophic losses in the Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II. After the war, the US military seized land—often at gunpoint—to build permanent bases on the islands, displacing farmers and making Okinawa’s economy dependent on construction and service industries tied to the US presence.1

The US, frustrated by the costs of pacifying repeated organized resistance from Okinawan people, returned control of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, shifting the financial and political burden of maintaining the bases there onto Japan.2 The Okinawa Promotion Budget became a central tool in this arrangement, channeling public funds into local infrastructure and large-scale construction projects. Major Japanese contractors often took the lion’s share of the profits, echoing exploitative patterns seen in Japanese aid projects in Southeast Asia.3

Scholar Jun Shimabukuro argues that the Promotion Budget functions to displace military and diplomatic tensions—produced by the concentration of US bases and the US-Japan Security Treaty—onto economic negotiations between Okinawa and “mainland” Japan.4 After the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by US servicemen sparked massive protests in 1995, Tokyo increasingly tied subsidies to local acceptance of bases, a tactic that fractured anti‑base movements.5 New development projects in the north of Okinawa island sprang up, linked to planned base construction in this region. During this period, Omi himself also received campaign funding from construction firms involved in these projects.6 OIST was first proposed within this context.7

Although Omi never publicly connected OIST to the base issue, he acknowledged that Okinawa’s “political and historical circumstances” uniquely enabled the bold experiment of OIST.8 Meanwhile, OIST has carefully sought to distance itself from any military association.

Double Displacement: Economic Development for Whom?

OIST’s stated mission is twofold: to produce world‑class research and to contribute to Okinawa’s development. By some measures, it has shown success on the former; however, fulfillment of the latter mission is much less clear. Only a minority of OIST’s students, technicians, and postdocs—and none of the ninety Principal Investigators—are currently from Okinawa.9 Low‑paid “auxiliary” roles that sustain daily operations, such as cleaning and catering, are outsourced to contractors and likely filled mostly by Okinawans; they are excluded from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) measures, free language training and other community programs offered to OIST’s students, direct employees, and their immediate family members. Outreach favors elite schools and polished PR over sustained grassroots collaboration that could empower broader socioeconomic groups in Okinawa.10

Facing local criticism over limited community impact, as well as government demands to diversify funding, OIST has increasingly emphasized entrepreneurship and corporate partnerships in recent years. Okinawa Association of Corporate Executives—a business association with members on OIST’s boards—envisions an “innovation ecosystem” linking OIST with corporations in ambitious development projects like Gateway 2050, which aims to convert land returned from urban military bases such as Kadena (a promise yet to materialize) into international business districts generating jobs and higher income.11

But such growth strategies, even if commercially successful, would leave many people behind. Higher-wage jobs demand long-term educational investment currently inaccessible to many Okinawans. It remains unclear to what extent any increase in municipal tax revenue that may result from the development projects would translate to meaningful improvements in social welfare.

It seems that the more local communities criticize OIST’s limited contribution to the regional economy, the more OIST leans into initiatives that channel resources upward, leaving many Okinawans’ lives unchanged if not worse. Building on Shimabukuro’s analysis, we can see a double displacement at work: Pressure to resolve the base issue is channeled into calls for economic development, which are further channeled into promises of corporate growth and profit.

The Science is the Point

The shallowness of OIST’s “science-washing” efforts also raises a curious question: why doesn’t it try harder? That is, if OIST engaged in more effective outreach, or worked harder to produce facile technofixes for Okinawa’s environmental and socioeconomic problems (with clearly political root causes), couldn’t it contribute more to sanitizing the Promotion Budget’s image?12 OIST’s half-heartedness makes sense if we recognize that the production of “world-class” science—unburdened by local concerns—is itself OIST’s core political role within Japan and the US-led empire.

Promoting STEM serves a dual function for states like Japan: It delivers strategic advantage while cloaking that function in universalist rhetoric about “advancing human knowledge” or “tackling humanity’s common challenges.”

This logic is more transparent in the Ministry of Defense’s controversial grants for basic research, launched in 2015. The ministry’s call for applications painstakingly explains that applications are not judged on the basis of military utility and that the ministry’s overseers will respect researchers’ scientific autonomy.13 Critics who only focus on the potential for weapons research miss half the point. The point is not weapons development per se, but bold, open-ended science that could eventually yield military advantage while justifying unfettered military funding as a driver of breakthroughs.

OIST follows a similar pattern. By painstakingly avoiding overt military ties, it presents itself as “neutral.” Yet, its cutting-edge research—overseen by the Cabinet Office headed by the prime minister—is aimed at boosting Japan’s scientific output and prestige, simultaneously conferring strategic advantage in industrial (and ultimately military) competition while legitimizing and normalizing the US-Japan alliance via the Okinawa Promotion Budget that supports it.14 In effect, the institution co-opts Okinawan dissent against militarization and colonization, channeling it into state-driven science that ultimately reinforces the US-led capitalist world system.15

Toward Science(s) for the People, not Empire

This setup yields many benefits for the few, mostly non-Okinawans, who can secure the higher-prestige positions as scientists and administrators at OIST: relatively stable funding and academic freedom (albeit within a circumscribed range of depoliticized science), livable wages, well-maintained facilities, and a degree of DEI and family support rare in Japan.16 Simultaneously, it gives OIST a near‑monopsony for internationally-trained workers in the region, leaving OIST workers isolated, vulnerable, and largely unable to challenge management.17 This dynamic hinders internal efforts to address harassment and management abuses.

Kōji Omi spearheaded the neoliberal academic reforms in the 1990s and 2000s that have since transformed Japan’s research landscape.18 In recent years, gaps between select institutions like OIST and others have widened, with steady cuts to block grants leading to tuition hikes, increased researcher precarity, and grueling competition among the latter.19 Simultaneously, governance reforms have shifted control away from students and workers, consolidating power within management and external boards.20

Like most mainstream post-war Japanese politicians, Omi’s stance was superficially pacifist, opposed to overt militarization yet uncritical of the US-Japan alliance.21 Revealingly, Omi argued that Japan must “compete through science and technology” to remain a “first-rate nation,” linking neoliberal restructuring to an ambitious STEM agenda in a vision to secure Japan’s position in the imperial core. Understanding OIST as a flagship of this policy reveals the powerlessness of its workers as a feature, not a bug, connecting their struggles to broader issues.

To make OIST into an institution that truly values all its workers and serves Okinawa, radical reforms are needed. To achieve them, scientists must dismantle their own positions as a detached elite, earning wider public support and weakening OIST’s monopsony, thereby increasing their leverage in the interconnected struggles to improve working conditions and combat the systemic injustices in which OIST is embedded.

Internally, this includes organizing for livable wages, stronger DEI, and scientific and language training opportunities for all workers—including “temp” staff—thus extending OIST’s benefits to wider segments of the local community. Simultaneously, OIST scientists must actively engage with external movements in Okinawa and Japan, calling for egalitarian reforms such as free tertiary education and extension of financial support to all PhD students instead of increasing defense spending, and collaborating with Indigenous, feminist, anti-militarist, and environmental activists to challenge the US-Japan alliance that oppresses the Ryukyus and underpins OIST’s current operations.22

Emerging coalitions highlight this potential. With Israel’s genocide in Gaza escalating, diverse groups have come together in solidarity with Palestine. OIST’s suppression of protests has spurred many to connect OIST’s problems to colonialism and imperialism, from Ryukyu to Palestine. OIST groups now collaborate with local movements against base construction in Urasoe and Henoko, learning from local activists and where appropriate, leveraging their scientific backgrounds for the cause. The concentration of international workers at OIST—designed to foster exchange that could be harnessed for strategic aims—is instead fostering a cross-pollination of radical perspectives. Workers are now using that design feature for their own revolution.

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Mamoru Erina is a researcher from Japan at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

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Notes

    1. Annmaria Shimabuku, Alegal: Biopolitics and the Unintelligibility of Okinawan Life (Fordham University Press, 2019), 65–87, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv75db00.9.
    2. Shimabuku, Alegal, 88–123.
    3. Noriko Kato,〈会社〉と基地建設をめぐる旅 [A journey through “companies” and base construction], (Korokara, 2024), 44.
    4. Jun Shimabukuro,「沖縄振興体制」を問うー壊された自治とその再生に向けて [Questioning the “Okinawa promotion system”: destroyed autonomy and its regeneration], (Horitsu Bunka Sha, 2014), 4–6.
    5. Shimabukuro,「沖縄振興体制」を問う [Questioning the “Okinawa promotion system”], 7–9; Shimabuku, Alegal, 126–27.
    6. S. Akamine, 154th Session of the Diet, House of Representatives, Special Committee on Okinawa and Northern Territories Issues, March 19, 2002, no. 6, comment 171.
    7. Naturally, this has invited speculation that OIST’s funding is a barter for bases, though there is no conclusive evidence of a direct link. Interestingly, OIST’s budget doubled in 2013–14, shortly after the governor approved construction of the new marine base in Henoko, in the north of Okinawa Island. Masayuki Shibata, a former OIST board member, remarked in a 2021 report: “Regarding my earlier statement that the Okinawa Promotion Budget is highly political, this becomes clear when we look at the changes between 2013 and 2014. Following Governor Nakaima’s approval of the relocation to Henoko in 2013, the total Okinawa Promotion Budget increased dramatically. As a result, the initial budget of 10.3 billion yen [of OIST] nearly doubled. It was a dreamlike increase, something that would never happen with a typical national budget. We received a budget far exceeding what we could reasonably expect, and this large budget has generally been maintained ever since.” The two governors who have held office since 2014, Takeshi Onaga and Denny Tamaki, have both been anti-base.
    8. “産学官連携を強調／尾身担当相” [Minister Omi emphasizes industry-academia-government collaboration], Ryukyu Shimpo, August 28, 2001.
    9. “Fiscal Year 2024 Performance Report,” Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, accessed October 14, 2025, 40.
    10. These statements are based on the personal experiences and observations of my own and of my colleagues.
    11. “Proposal for the Development of OIST,” Okinawa Association of Corporate Executives, accessed October 14, 2025, 19–20.
    12. To date, OIST’s most significant science-washing effort may be its coral conservation research, which OIST publicizes heavily even as reefs are destroyed by the military and commercial construction that OIST PR avoids confronting.
    13. “安全保障技術研究推進制度 公募要領 説明資料” [Security technology research promotion program application guidelines explanation material], Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, accessed October 14, 2025, 4, 11, 13, 16, 18.
    14. At a 2010 symposium commemorating OIST’s inauguration, Yoshinori Suematsu, a senior Cabinet Office official, stated that he hoped OIST would serve as “a symbol of U.S.-Japan cooperation” (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, “Senior Vice Minister Suematsu Remarks,” filmed October 2010 at the OIST International Symposium 2010, YouTube, 3 min., 40 sec.). That this initially seemed unremarkable to the author shows how thoroughly the once-contentious US-Japan Security Treaty has been normalized in today’s society. It was only after OIST revealed itself to be profoundly opposed to severing ties with an Israeli partner, the Weizmann Institute of Science—amid escalating and widely livestreamed genocide in Gaza—that the meaning of OIST’s proximity to the Cabinet Office came into sharp focus.
    15. Indeed, the emphasis on profit growth—rather than autonomous and equitable development for and by the Okinawan people—in OIST’s vision for economic impact underscores its commitment to capitalism. This inherently unsustainable world system is propped up in part by the US-Japan alliance, the very framework entrenching the colonization of the Ryukyus.
    16. This may help explain why OIST seems to attract people who struggle to find thriving work elsewhere in Japan, whether due to systemic or interpersonal queerphobia, ableism, racism, sexism, or any other barriers to assimilating into mainstream Japanese society. Any movement for OIST workers’ liberation must therefore be not only for actively employed workers but also the “surplus population” (as defined by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant in their book Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto[Verso, 2022]), to whom many OIST workers are adjacent.
    17. It must also be noted that those without Japanese passports or permanent resident status typically rely on their employer or university for their visas. Furthermore, outside of a few localized resources (including at OIST), the broader support infrastructure for non-Japanese speakers remains limited.
    18. Kōji Omi, “科学技術創造立国を目指す” [Aiming to build a nation through creativity in science and technology], July 2004 at Josuikai Hitotsubashi Forum 21, transcript.
    19. Hideki Tanaka, “Japan’s University Fund is Ill-equipped to Stem Decline in Research Performance,” East Asia Forum, December 29, 2023; Takeshi Komagome, 統治される大学ー知の囲い込みと民主主義の解体 [Governed universities: the enclosure of knowledge and the dismantling of democracy] (Chiheisha, 2024), 94–101; Asahi Shimbun Kokuritsudai No Himei Reporting Team, 限界の国立大学ー法人化20年、何が最高学府を劣化させるのか？[National universities at their limits: 20 years after incorporation, what is deteriorating the top institutions of education?] (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan, 2024), 42–50.
    20. Komagome, 統治される大学 [Governed universities], 42–46.
    21. “尾身幸次（７６）” [Kōji Omi, 76], candidate datasheet for the 2009 Japanese National Diet elections on the Asahi Shimbun, accessed October 14, 2025; Omi, “科学技術創造立国を目指す” [Aiming to build a nation through the creation of science and technology].
    22. Sae Shimauchi, “Equally Accessible Tertiary Education in Japan Still Faces Obstacles,” East Asia Forum, August 3, 2022; “Funding Cut for Foreign Students Gains Nod from Ministry Panel,” The Asahi Shimbun, August 1, 2025; “Defense Ministry Requests Record 8.8 Tril. Yen for FY 2026 Budget,” The Mainichi, August 29, 2025; “沖縄に土地返せ／辺野古 パレスチナ人訴え” [Return the land to Okinawa: Palestinians’ appeal in Henoko], Okinawa Times, September 26, 2025.