Minsaa

• Japanese: ミンサー (minsaa)

Minsaa is a style of decorative weave known today as representative of the Yaeyama and Miyako Islands. It is typified by a five-and-four pattern of alternating squares, which are today seen in myriad contexts throughout the Yaeyama and Miyako Islands. Though minsaa has long been a key symbolic element of Yaeyama/Miyako efforts to distinguish themselves from "Okinawa" and to resist incorporation into a single, homogeneous, "Okinawan" identity, minsaa is today, ironically perhaps, coming to be used (and seen) as symbolic or representative of Okinawan culture as a whole; even as Okinawan culture is spread into the outer islands and ideas of Okinawanness are mistakenly applied to the entire island chain, at the same time, cultural elements such as minsaa are appropriated into Okinawan culture as if they had belonged to Okinawa all along.