Japanese Literary Trauma Narratives, World War II, and Okinawan Literature
Prior to David Stahl’s recent work on trauma and dissociation in Japanese literature and film, scholarship on Japanese literature utilizing the psychoanalytic approach to trauma has tended to focus on first-generation trauma survivors of the Asia-Pacific War.3 While there is no shortage of Japanese literary works dealing with traumatized characters from a variety of eras, David Stahl observes that the use of the psychoanalytic approach to study Japanese literature has been rare (Stahl 2017, 1). Additionally, the studies of Japanese literature that utilize psychoanalytic trauma/PTSD theory that Stahl identifies are almost entirely about war trauma narratives related to the Asia-Pacific War largely written by or about first-generation war survivors. These studies have productively analyzed how trauma has manifested in many of the characters as well as writers concerning Japan’s Asia-Pacific War experience.
Within Japanese literature about the Asia-Pacific War, Okinawan literary representations have been distinct from Japanese depictions due to the nature in which Okinawa experienced the War through the Battle of Okinawa and its relationships with Japan and the United States. Okinawa experienced the only large-scale land battle to occur on sovereign Japanese soil with a large civilian presence, has had a complicated and ongoing colonial relationship with Japan, and continues to endure a large-scale American military presence. As Gavan McCormick has observed, “Okinawa became, and remains, to today a joint US-Japanese colony in all but name” (McCormack 2016). Okinawan war narratives are different from war narratives by mainland Japanese writers in their focus on civilian accounts, and on how the legacy of the war lingers in the very topography of Okinawa, often in relation to the US bases and ongoing legacies of colonization and military occupation (Ikeda 2016, 186-190).
Okinawan War Literature, Medoruma Shun, and “Army Messenger”
Medoruma Shun is an important award-winning contemporary writer of Japanese fiction and a leading social critic from Okinawa who has been writing innovative and imaginative stories since the early 1980s. His short story “Taiwan Woman: Record of a Fish Shoal” (Gyogunki, 1983; trans. 2016) was awarded the Ryukyu Shimpö Short Story Prize, and “Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard” (Heiwa döri to nazukerareta machi o aruite, 1986) won the New Okinawa Literature Prize. Medoruma received national and international attention when he won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize and Kyushu Arts Festival Literary Prize for his short story “Droplets” (Suiteki, 1997; trans. 2000). Shortly afterward in 2000, he received the Kawabata Yasunari literary prize and the Kiyama Shöhei literary prize for his short story’ “Mabuigumi (Spirit Stuffing)” (Mabuigumi, 1998; trans. 2007). Both “Droplets” and “Mabuigumi (Spirit Stuffing)” deal with repressed memories of the Battle of Okinawa from 50 years earlier. Through his critical essays and online blog, he continues to engage serious and ongoing social problems regarding Okinawa’s relationship with Japan and the United States. Additionally, he has been an active protestor of the construction of a new offshore military base near his hometown of Nakijin, making the news after being arrested for entering a restricted area in his canoe in 2016. His writing about the lasting aftereffects of the Battle of Okinawa on civilian survivors in the decades following the war have continued to receive critical praise and been the focus of scholarly analysis.
The exclusive focus on adult second-generation characters in “Army Messenger” differs from Medoruma’s other war-related stories published to date. Unlike “Droplets” and “Mabuigumi (Spirit Stuffing)” in which the focal characters are exclusively war survivors, all of the focal characters in “Army Messenger” are second-generation war survivors. “Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard” and “The Wind Sound” (Füon 1985-1986, trans. 2009) both focalize part of their stories through second- and third-generation war survivor characters, but the majority of both stories are focalized through war survivors; the later-generation characters are young children lacking knowledge and a conscious awareness of the Battle of Okinawa. While stories such as “Tree of Butterflies” (Gunchö no ki 2000, trans. 2016) and Medoruma’s novel In the Woods of Memory (Me no oku no mori 2009, trans. 2017) contain second- or later-generation adult focal characters, war-survivor focal characters play a crucial role in each work, with In the Woods of Memory primarily dominated by warsurvivor focal characters. Within Medoruma’s body of fiction writing to date, in terms of theme and character focalization, “Army Messenger” most clearly focuses on second-generation war survivor experiences and transgenerational trauma.
Transgenerational Hauntings in the Landscape of Okinawa, Japan 161
