Memoirs of the Battle of Okinawa: From the Perspective of ‘Mabuigumi’

Abstract

This article focuses on the story ‘Mabuigumi’ (‘Spirit Stuffing,’ 1998) by Medoruma Shun, a contemporary writer of Okinawan descent. The story explicitly depicts the history of the Battle of Okinawa and the people who were traumatized by the war. First, this article demonstrates that landscapes and living things evoke memories of the war and people, and they play a significant role in showing that people’s present lives remain threatened. Second, the article conjectures that an āman (a hermit crab) represents Okinawa, which was traumatized by the mainland, and shows that Uta (the protagonist) is burdened by the guilt of her own survival. In addition, it considers the love of a mother (Omito) and son (Kōtarō) for each other. Third, this article illustrates that the history of the mainland was decentralized through visual expressions of personal memories of war. The history of mainland Japan does not regard the fact that Japanese soldiers killed Okinawans during the Battle of Okinawa. History, as officially narrated by the Okinawans, changes its narrative content depending on the shifting relationship between Okinawa and the mainland. This work relativizes and decentralizes the official historical narratives of the mainland and Okinawa through repressed personal memories of the war.