When the party ends: Occupied desire, colonial complicity, and illusory recognition in Ōshiro Tatsuhiro’s “The Cocktail Party”

This article examines Ōshiro Tatsuhiro’s novella “The Cocktail Party” (Kakuteru Pātī, 1967) by investigating how the Okinawan protagonist’s desire for power and recognition of equality drives him to pursue an illusory friendship with American occupiers. Through an analysis of the protagonist’s desire for material and sensual pleasure offered by the American world, and his sense of empowerment through access to that world, I demonstrate how he misguidedly believes that his affinity with American occupiers satisfies his longing for power and elevates him above his fellow Okinawans within the colonial hierarchy. The protagonist’s admiration for the privileged American world, I maintain, further reveals how colonial domination feeds on the colonized’s desire for power, exploiting that desire to reinforce the colonizer’s superior status and perpetuate the hierarchical colonial system. While the protagonist reaps certain benefits from his affinity with the occupier, their friendship turns out to be deceptive when he is demanded by his American friend to remain silent about the rape of his daughter. By uncovering the violence hidden beneath the euphemistic slogan of “Ryukyuan-American friendship,” the novella not only questions the authenticity of the recognition pursued by Okinawan subjects under colonial conditions but indicates how self-alienation as well as loss of autonomy occur during the pursuit of such illusory recognition. In addition, the novella’s depiction of a complex and nuanced image of Okinawans prompts a reconsideration of the relationship between Okinawa and its colonizers in terms of intimacy and collusion, going beyond a simplistic binary of resistance and oppression.