Dark Green Religion, trans-Pacific counterculture, and the ethno-environmental politics of Japanese Hippies on Suwanose Island and Amami Ōshima, 1965–1989

In the 1970s, the political theory of the Japanese New Left merged with the countercultural and religious practices of the Japanese hippie movement, leading to a successful environmental protest on the Tokara and Amami island chains. A small hippie commune called ‘The Tribes’ (Buzoku) on Suwanose Island was part of a global countercultural network linking the Californian Beat scene, West Coast Zen, the Japanese New Left, and environmental protests. On Amami Ōshima, the same hippies, led by Pon (Yamada Kaiya), played a key role in local environmental protests. They practised Dark Green Religion and successfully opposed East Asian Fuels (Tōa Nenryō KK) from building a refinery on an uninhabited island, gaining the support of the local fishing community. However, their increasing alignment with anti-Japanese activism led to alienation from the locals and violent attacks by right-wing groups in 1988, resulting in the commune’s dissolution. This study highlights the New Left’s contribution to ethno-environmentalism, emphasizing the intersection of Dark Green Religion, counterculture, and anti-imperialist activism. It shows that left-wing hippies were not necessarily bound by notions of ‘victimhood’, but through transnational counterculture and religion developed an essentialist understanding of nature as the cornerstone of their environmentalist activism.