Okinawan students shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration outside the Kadena Air Base
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The kokujo is easy to spot. She takes her fashion direction from Lil' Kim, favoring halters and short shorts to show off lots of deeply roasted skin. Her nails are long and painted, her ears decorated with big hoops, her lipstick frosty white. She can dance, she can drink, she can party. And she can hold her own against the men.
That's why it's hard for many of the women to swallow the rape charge against Woodland. "We amejo feel the girl was in the wrong," says Maki Oshiro, 27. She and a girlfriend are sitting in a semicircular booth at Else, sipping cocktails and watching the dance floor. "She probably didn't know how to behave. We're here because we know it's where the Americans gather. These guys aren't scary; we know how to handle them." She mentions Lucie Blackman, the English woman murdered last summer outside Tokyo; a Japanese businessman is being held on murder charges. "See? Japanese guys can be scarier."
Instead of circling their wagons around one of their own, amejo and kokujo are disdainful of and angry at the victim. Some gossip she dated the defendant; others speculate her friends shamed her into calling it a rape. They all agree the incident has brought unwanted, critical attention to them and their habits. "Amejo is a derogatory term, isn't it?" says Hitomi Murayama, a long-haired 24-year-old in baggy hip-hop clothing. "It's just another way for mainland Japanese to look down on Okinawa. They don't understand that we Okinawans are naturally friendly and outgoingand that includes toward American servicemen."
The military establishment knew it couldn't plunk a herd of young men in a foreign locale and expect them to act like saints. Yasutaka Oshiro, a sociology professor at Okinawa International University, has researched the history of the entertainment districts around the U.S. bases. "The zones were created by U.S. officials following World War II," he says, "to counter the problem of U.S. troops raping local women with abandon." Poor, unmarried local girls were corralled into prostitution. The sex market in a town called Koza outside the gates of Kadena Air Force Base roared during the Vietnam War, when thousands of troops bivouacked in Okinawa on their way to and from the war zone. The trade has simmered down, but new arrivals on base are still initiated at a Koza bar featuring live sex on stage and another in which an old hag shoots a banana out of her vagina.
Nightlife, like the service itself, was segregated back then. One area in Koza was designated for blacks, and another for whites. Today, while the party spots are still split by racewhites heading toward bars, blacks congregating in hip-hop clubsit's a mixed bunch that piles into the "loser cruisers," military-run buses for the poor sods stationed on remote camps that take them to bars on base like the Globe & Anchor. But the guys playing arcade games and pool are white; the ones on the dance floor are black.
The girls are here too, signed in at base checkpoints by friends and boyfriends. They're a tough bunch. Around 2 a.m. one recent night, a fight breaks out between three amejo and an American woman. A slap fest ensues before massive security guards in yellow T shirts toss the Japanese women out.
The fight, of course, is over men. American men are thought to be kinder, more expressive and more romantic than their Japanese counterparts. "ReallyI can't remember the last time I went out with a Japanese guy," says Yoko Taniguchi, an accountant on base. She's taking a break from the dance floor at the club Slum, where the tanned, pretty 30-year-old in newly braided cornrows and tight FUBU capris can't help but be swarmed by men. "American menthey make much better boyfriends." Some women simply fall in love. A few might desire marriage and a life abroad. For others, it's just about sex. "It's just asobi (play)," says one kokujo. Another blames Japanese men. "They don't know how to talk, they don't know how to ask you out, and they certainly don't know what to do in bed," she says. "American guysblack guysdo."
For Americans in the age of hit shows like Sex in the City this kind of talk isn't even titillating. But in Japan, admitting a sex life is scandalous and can scuttle a woman's credibilitynowhere more so than in a trial for rape. "The defendant's lawyer can use the number of a victim's sexual partners as evidence," says Yukiko Tsunoda, a lawyer in Shizuoka. "To win a rape case, a plaintiff often must prove violence, a threat to her life, and that she resisted with all her might."
In the court of public opinion, both Woodland and his accuser have taken a beating. In late July the putative victim sent a letter to the media begging Japanese reporters to stop hounding her and her friends. "There is victim-bashing both in the press and the public," says Suzuyo Takazato, founder of the Rape Emergency Intervention Counseling Center in Okinawa and an Okinawan assemblywoman. Makiko Tanaka, Japan's female Foreign Minister, is reported to have said to colleagues there must have been "something wrong with the girl, going out so late at night." Old-fashioned attitudes impose shame and blame on the victim; studies say this limits the number of rapes reported to the police to between 1% and 10%.
Given Japanese courts' bias against the plaintiffs in rape cases, it seems evident that if the defendant were a Japanese man, he may never have been indicted. But deep, negative stereotypes exist about American military men, too. Locals insist that soldiers act here in ways they never would at home. They blame the effects of battle training, coupled with upbringing in rough areas and poor education. And though it's left unsaid, it's hard to believe they think race plays no role. "When a suspect is black and from the military, people here assume he must be guilty," says lawyer Eddie-Callagain, who is also black. "Meanwhile, whenever something happens, the rest of us think: oh, please, don't let him be black."
Back at the American village a month after the incident, a matsuri (festival) is in full swing. Children wave cotton candy and scoop at goldfish with paper nets. Shirtless skateboarders do stunts on an open walkway. Women in shorts and bikini tops lick at jewel-colored snow cones. In the shadow of a giant Ferris wheel with a Coca-Cola logo and a two-story emporium called the American Depot march a cavalry of drum-banging young Japanese men. They're sweating through their traditional Okinawan outfits of purple bandannas and swinging orange coats.
But across the street, in front of a billboard for the movie Pearl Harbor, is another group of Okinawans from Ryukyu University. The students wave banners and shout hoarsely into bullhorns: "We oppose American bases on Okinawa! We oppose President Bush! We oppose violence to women! We will not rest till the bases go!"
At dusk outside the gates of Kadena Air Force Base, neon signs flicker on as servicemen begin to congregate, poking around in the clothing stores, buying yakitori on sticks from street vendors and horsing around. Some of the men later make their way to the dance clubs, others to the billiard bars. As midnight approaches, carloads of women pull into the parking lots nearby. They fix their lipstick in the rearview mirrors and tease out their hair as if according to some military instruction manual. It's as if they're going into battle.