The dangers of cosmopolitanism: Okinawa, China and the United States in Ōshiro Tatsuhiro’s The Cocktail Party

In the second half of Ōshiro Tatsuhiro’s novella, Kakuteru Pātī (The Cocktail Party), first published in 1967, one of the American characters, Mister Miller, responds to the Okinawan protagonist’s request for help: ‘We tried hard to establish mutual friendship that went beyond race or nationality. I believe we established equal relationships on both sides. I don’t want to destroy the balance we’ve achieved with such ef fort’.1 Miller’s ef forts in developing international friendship in Okinawa are unable to withstand the historical and political realities of the situation on the island at the time. Indeed, the rest of the narrative shows that Miller’s ef forts are a sham, masking an imperialist agenda. This fictional representation of the impossibility of cultivating genuine cosmopolitan friendship in the face of inequality and injustice provides a useful starting-point for an examination of the Ryūkyū kingdom, and later Okinawa’s interactions with the world outside. The historical example of Okinawa demonstrates that, while the cosmopolitan orientation is possible for small countries with powerful allies, in the absence of adequate defence, it can become a terminal liability and is impossible to sustain in the colonial situation.