Transgenerational Hauntings in the Landscape of Okinawa, Japan: Medoruma Shun’s “Army Messenger”

Kyle Ikeda

This chapter focuses on the second-generation war survivor fiction of Medoruma Shun, a writer from Okinawa Prefecture in Japan, and examines how his short story “Army Messenger” (Denreihei 2004) contributes to the understanding of both direct and transgenerational war trauma. I analyze how the story’ represents the effects of war violence on survivors of the Battle of Okinawa and their offspring in relation to living in, or in close proximity to, sites of the war past. “Army Messenger” shares characteristics with transgenerational trauma and second-generation Holocaust trauma writing through its focus on children of war survivors, the concealing of war memories, and the exploration of how pre-life atrocity can affect the subconscious mind. The story’ also expands theoretical understandings of second-generation survivor knowledge and writing by’ revealing the role of landscapes, sites of war, and inhabited war-related locations in the mediation of transgenerational trauma.

While scholars have productively' utilized existing theories of trauma to interpret writing about Japanese war experiences as acts of coming to terms with trauma and accordingly' have elucidated the psychological reasons for silence, repression, and avoidance of traumatic war memories,¹ little has been done in regard to examining the role of the physical environment, landscape, and urban structures in the transgenerational transmission of war trauma and memory' in Japanese literature. As I have discussed elsewhere regarding geographic proximity' to sites of atrocity', existing theories of trauma in relation to children of survivors do not elaborate on the effect of inhabiting sites of the war past, atrocities, or traumatic incidents.² Delineating and detailing the ways in which war trauma in Okinawa is shaped by' both survivor and second-generation survivor relationships with sites of war and local landscape is important to the generalized study' of trauma through its contribution to understanding which aspects of trauma are culturally' specific and which are more generalizable. Okinawan war trauma fiction can illuminate how constant exposure to memory' triggers that constitute trauma sites affect survivors through depictions of conscious and unconscious war-related responses, actions, and behavior.

My' analysis focuses on the transgenerational aspects of war trauma that “Army' Messenger” engages through the story’s use of the ghost of an army' messenger from the Battle of Okinawa that haunts the two focal characters,

Transgenerational Hauntings in the Landscape of Okinawa, Japan 159 Kinjo and Tomori. The story substantiates existing theories on trauma, particularly related to transgenerational collective atrocity and second-generation Holocaust trauma such as Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory and Gabriele Schwab’s articulation of hauntings. Additionally, Medoruma’s story, and by extension Okinawan war trauma fiction, reveals how hauntings are also deeply connected to and mediated by places and sites of the traumatic past, many of which have been left unmarked and un-commemorated. The impact of geographic proximity to and living within sites of trauma portrayed in “Army Messenger” reveal the limitations of dominant theories of trauma that primarily focus on the internal psyche of displaced survivors and the importance of narrative for working through trauma. In contrast to a therapeutic narrative of trauma healing, “Army Messenger,” as a (post)colonial text, presents the dilemma of consolatory mourning of war loss within Okinawa’s ongoing condition as a veritable joint colony of the United States and Japan. The traumatic reenactments in “Army Messenger” constituting the story’s hauntings serve more as indicators of the irreconcilability of the war past to contemporary Okinawa’s political situation, than as breakthroughs in the process of working through unresolved trauma.