Abstrakt
Medoruma Shun is one of the leading contemporary figures of Japanese literature in Okinawa that frequently uses fantastic, deeply rooted in traditional worldview, to point out the social and political problems of current Okinawa as well as unresolved historical traumas of the World War II. Okinawa is a culturally and politically specific region of Japan with a very troubled historical experience.
The annexation by Japan and colonial policies leading to the suppression of the local culture, devastating Battle of Okinawa that killed a quarter of the population, becoming a US protectorate until 1972 and then staying as the main base for the American forces in Japan despite the massive popular resistance. All of this makes the relationship of Okinawa and rest of Japan deeply ambiguous.
This historical experience is strongly reflected in Medoruma's writing. His literature presents Okinawa as a place where the trauma of the war, discrimination by the central state power and crimes of the American soldiers have become an integral part of the fictional landscape of his works and these problems manifest frequently as supernatural occurrences deeply rooted in traditional beliefs and religion.
Be it the female shaman in Mabuigumi (Spirit Recalling) confronting war trauma, the abused girl in Umukaji tu Chiriti (Carried off with the Shadows) or the satirically portrayed shaman turned political leader in Okinawan Bukku Revyū (Okinawan Book Revue), in all these cases Medoruma presents Okinawa as a place where the supernatural is internally connected to the traditional and political. This paper will focus on with the structure of the fictional worlds of these three stories and the way tradition is used as a source of fantastical elements and how does this facilitate the construction of Okinawa as a fantastical literary topos distinct from the rest of Japan.