ABSTRACT
As important as the Okinawa Summit was to the global community as a whole for its substantive accomplishments, agenda innovations, pioneering themes, and media visibility, it had an even larger presence in the perceptions and politics of the citizens of Japan. Although the Japanese government and citizens have long focussed more closely on the G7 than their counterparts in most other member countries, the 2000 Okinawa Summit — the first Japanese-hosted summit to be held outside Tokyo — had a particularly strong impact. This was in part due to timing, as the controversial selection of Okinawa by Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi in the autumn of 1999 was followed in the spring by Obuchi's sudden death, his replacement by Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, and a general election that confirmed Mori's position. But it was also due to the particularly poignant and multifaceted political meaning of Okinawa as a site, not only in the Japanese-U.S. relationship that dominated Japanese foreign policy, but in Japan's domestic political life as well.
