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Okinawan War Memory

Transgenerational Trauma and the War Fiction of Medoruma Shun

By Kyle Ikeda

To Be Published December 15th 2013 by Routledge – 240 pages

Series: Asia's Transformations/Literature and Society

Purchasing Options:

  • Hardback: $135.00
    978-0-415-85395-8
    Not yet available

Description

Focusing on the work of Medoruma Shun, one of Okinawa's most insightful writers and social critics, this book explores the problems and limits of conventional representations of war memory and trauma surrounding the Battle of Okinawa. Comparing Medoruma's fiction with modes of memory making such as survivor testimony, historical narrative and realist fiction, this book analyzes how his war fiction illuminates the nature of Okinawan war memory and trauma in ways that Western trauma does not cover by highlighting the role of space and place in mediating memories of the war past. This book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian literature, Japanese literature, Japanese history, war memory and Okinawa.

Contents

Introduction: Transgenerational War Memory in Okinawa Part I: Simmering Awareness 1. Unarticulated Memory and Traumatic Recall in The Crying Wind and Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard Part II: Vicarious Imagination and the Magical Real 2. Unrecognized Signs and Unexplained Phenomena in Droplets 3. Subjective and Objective Fiction: Medoruma's Spirit Stuffing and Ōshiro’s Island of the Gods Part III: Conscious Engagement and Working With Fragments 4. Critical Sentimenality and Conscious Engagements in Tree of Butterflies 5. Geographically Situated Postmemory in Forest at the Back of My Eye 6. Conclusion: Second-Generation Okinawan War Fiction

Author Bio

Kyle Ikeda is Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont, USA.

Name: Okinawan War Memory: Transgenerational Trauma and the War Fiction of Medoruma Shun (Hardback) – Routledge 
Description: By Kyle Ikeda. Focusing on the work of Medoruma Shun, one of Okinawa's most insightful writers and social critics, this book explores the problems and limits of conventional representations of war memory and trauma surrounding the Battle of Okinawa. Comparing...
Categories: Japanese Literature, Japanese History, Asian Literature, Asian History, Asian Literature