goyablog

Riffing on the Magritte painting of his famous (non-)pipe in his series “The Treachery of Images,” I’m centering the book chapter I’m currently writing (reforestation/tropicalization of postwar Okinawa) on the idea of flora as symbol (representation of something other than what it is) in postwar Okinawa. Non-native palm trees planted there to evoke the tropics for tourists is my prime example. Of course Magritte was commenting on his painting as a representation of a pipe, not a pipe itself while I am talking about the palm tree in Okinawa as something even more radically not-what-it-seems-to-be: I argue it is not planted as a palm tree, but as a sign of the tropical, as a pure symbol. Demonstration of this symbolic nature (get it? — symbolic “nature”) of the palm in Okinawa lies in its absurdity. My argument (as I think about now after two glasses of very real — not symbolic — wine) hinges on the idea that the more labor intensive and dangerous and expensive and non-utilitarian palm trees are in Okinawa, the less they exist and are experienced as a material object (tree). They are sensed on the periphery of the consciousness of a tourist only as a vague index of the tropical. People don’t seek shade from them, they don’t eat their fruit (in the case of coconut palms), they don’t climb them. They are not experienced, used, as trees. The fact that tall palms are non-native to Okinawa is for a reason: they topple in typhoons. They don’t belong there. And yet, thousands have been transplanted into the potentially most dangerous areas — along main “tourist-exposed” thoroughfares. Okinawa prefecture spends a LOT of money buttressing these palms and netting the coconuts on coconut palms. It’s ridiculous. Absurd. But, it is calculated that what is expended in material costs and labor is recouped in tourist dollars drawn to the place for its tropical look. That, in a nutshell, is the heart of the chapter. Hibiscus are a part of this story too, although it works a bit differently. That’ll be tomorrow’s topic….