Unspoken memory and vicarious trauma: the Battle of Okinawa in the second-generation survivor fiction of Medoruma Shun
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University of Hawai'i
Abstract
In “Unspoken Memory and Vicarious Trauma: The Battle of Okinawa in the
Second-Generation Survivor Fiction of Medoruma Shun,” I analyze how memories of the
Battle of Okinawa have been imagined and portrayed in the fiction of Okinawa’s premier
contemporary writer, Medoruma Shun (b. 1960). Drawing from theory on literary
narrative, studies on war memory, and research on second-generation trauma, I develop
three major arguments concerning the ways in which Medoruma’s war fiction contributes
to public knowledge of the Battle of Okinawa. First, I reveal how Medoruma’s early
war-related stories, “Fuon” (The Crying Wind, 1985-6) and “Heiwa dori to nazukerareta
machi o aruite” (Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard, 1986), engage unspoken or
inexpressible memories of the Battle of Okinawa that have been avoided or left out of
survivor testimony. Medoruma’s knowledge of these untold and traumatic memories, I
demonstrate, grows out of his experience as the child and grandchild of survivors of the
Battle of Okinawa.
Second, I analyze how Medoruma’s stories “Suiteki” (Droplets, 1997) and
“Mabuigumi” (Spirit Stuffing, 1998) challenge the conventions of historical narrative and
the tenets of realist representation through the portrayal of unverifiable and unexplained
phenomena. Although Medoruma has been labeled a writer of “magical realism,” I argue
that such categorization risks overlooking the challenge to mainstream Japanese and
Western epistemology that the so-called “magical” aspects of his stories contain.
Third, I show how “Guncho no ki” (Tree of Butterflies, 2000) embraces the
subjective, emotional, and victim-oriented narratives of war survivors that conservative
nationalists as well as progressive critics have dismissed as inaccurate or self-serving. In “Tree of Butterflies,” these emotional narratives also critically point to internal
differences within Okinawan war experiences, such as Okinawan acts of aggression and
discrimination against other Okinawans, and disrupt collective Okinawan modes of
remembering built on the erasure of such memories. With his ongoing serialized novel
Me no oku no mori (Forest at the Back of My Eye, 2004- ), Medoruma has moved
toward a longer and more polyphonic narrative that still explores the inner-thoughts and
unspoken memories of war survivors through the use and depiction of vicarious trauma.
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Ikeda, K. (2007). Unspoken memory and vicarious trauma: The Battle of Okinawa in the second-generation survivor fiction of Medoruma Shun. Retrieved from ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT 3302138)