“Bullying” as a Trap for Solidarity ：An Essay on Shun Medoruma’s <i>Mā No Mita Sora</i> (The Sky as Seen by Ma)

Abstract

In this paper, I read Mā No Mita Sora (The Sky as Seen by Ma), written by Shun Medoruma. Medoruma has been regarded as a author of Okinawa literature. However, in many of Medoruma’s works, “Bullying” is expressed. It is important to consider the role of ‘bullying’ in his work. The main characters in this work are “I” and “Ma.” “I” thought Ma was something like him. This is because “Ma” appeared to be frightened by his aggressiveness in “bullying”. Father-on-mother violence was the norm in “I”’s family. “I” both hated my father and feared that one day he would become like him. In this way, this work raises the possibility of being able to stand in solidarity with others through the medium of one’s own familiar “difficulty of living”. However, was that “I” was not aware that I was in a completely different position from Ma. As a result, “I” could not be conscious of his aggressiveness or imagine the structural violence “Ma” was subjected to. Through the above reading, we evaluate this work as a work that expresses through “bullying” the possibility and impossibility of standing in solidarity with others in a different position from our own.