Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature From
Okinawa
Edited by Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson
University of Hawaii Press
362 pages
"Where are you from," she asked.
I thought about where I was from and lit a cigarette.
The place colored by associations with tattoos, the jabisen,
And ways as strange as ornamental designs.
"Very far away," I answered.
-- Yamanokuchi Baku
Southern Exposure has grand designs: it is at
once an anthology of Okinawan literature, a cultural survey of the region, a historical
primer, a chronicle of otherness. Those familiar with the area will have an inkling
of what this means: lyrical seaside settings, unique indigenous traditions sandwiched
between the condescension of mainland Japan and the ever-present U.S. military,
a history haunted by invasion in World War II and contemporary marginalization.
Even the barbed wire-&-beach cover suggests this isn't going to be disposable
summertime reading.
To their credit, Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson understand the enormity of this
enterprise: their informative introduction includes a rueful four pages on the
vagaries of translating Okinawan regional dialects into English. Fortunately for
them (and us), the writers they feature are a dazzling bunch, easily transcending
the stuffiness which can plague collections such as these.
The anthology is comprised of fiction (eleven stories and a novella) and a smattering
of poetry from the past eighty years. All of them address similar concerns: displaced
lives and roots, the disconnect between traditional obligations and current necessities,
an uneasy present built upon the past's ruins (or as in Shima Tsuyoshi's amusing
yet affecting story "Bones" (1973), literally built atop the bones of war victims).
What saves it all from mere didacticism is the writers' feel for the rhythms and
details of daily life. In their hands, normalcy becomes captivating, whether it
be a mandatory visit to the relatives, scrapping together enough dough for a motorcycle,
maintaining that fishing routine, calculating the proper appeasement for ancestors,
flirting with the boyish G.I., or stealing a goat in order to earn a comely bar
owner's kudos. The characters who populate these narratives are a colorful bunch:
one-armed farmers, ornery elders, lecherous shysters, wrinkled-up prostitutes,
murderous adulterers, and corrupt policemen. Much as Okinawa has struggled to
rise above oppression and isolation, we witness the collision of the desperate
and mundane in these narratives.
Some of the pieces have obviously been chosen for their political utility: Kushi
Fusako's "Memoirs of a Declining Ryukyuan Woman" (1932), which is referred to
at least a dozen times in the introduction, is a polished but slight anecdote
about "passing" as a mainland Japanese. More interesting is Kushi's written defense
of her work in the face of snotty Japanese critics, which is included here. Passing
and its emotional toll are also dealt with in "Officer Ukuma" (1922) and "Mr.
Saito of Heaven Building" (1938), the predicaments of both stories' titular protagonists
- paranoid men in acknowledged positions of power -reminiscent of the best Harlem
Renaissance literature.
Other stories are character studies filtered through the lens of specific regional
experience: Yoshida Sueko's "Love Suicide at Kamaara" (1984) is a languorous but
touching tale about the love of a local hooker well past her prime for a G.I.
deserter who is clueless about the whole double-suicide thing. Likewise, Kishaba
Jun's "Dark Flowers" (1955), Nakahara Shin's "The Silver Motorcycle" (1977), and
Shimokawa Hiroshi's "Love Letter From L.A." (1978) center on Okinawan women, the
U.S. military men they love and lose, and the disapproving eyes of friends and
neighbors. The latter, in its progression from mild jealousy to outright psychological
cruelty, is particularly devastating.
The longer pieces in the collection stretch their artistic muscles. Oshiro Tatsuhiro's
"Turtleback Tombs" (1966) presents the step-by-step disintegration of a local
family during the American bombings of Okinawa - in its scorched-earth grit and
the family's stubborn adherence to ancient traditions, it is an elegy to an overwhelmed
way of life. Yamanoha Nobuko's "Will 'o the Wisp" (1985) is another tour-de-force,
merging evocative underwater settings with a hallucinatory narrative told from
the point of view of a drowned woman and her unborn child. And Medoruma Shun's
"Droplets," which won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1997, melds Dostoyevskian
psychology with fabulist touches, as a man tormented by the ghosts of dead soldiers
must endure a melon-sized growth on his leg which drips with elixirs and poisons.
The concluding novella, Matayoshi Eiki's "Fortunes by the Sea" (1998), ends the
collection on a properly bemused note. In its dry prose, its witty frankness when
it comes to sex and other sordid matters, and its lovable anti-hero - an emasculated
househusband who can't even take a boat out to sea without vomiting - the story
is redolent of hip contemporary literature. But our man doesn't find his manhood:
he botches his chance for adultery, his robbery scheme goes awry, and he still
isn't much of a fisherman by story's end. Yet he emerges with his sense of wonder
intact. Much like the rest of Southern Exposure and the region this anthology
celebrates, the piece is sad but never self-pitying, funny but substantial, artful
but not arty, and above all, a tribute to survival. .
