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Fantastic Realities: Magical Realism in Contemporary Okinawan Fiction

Fantastic Realities: Magical Realism in Contemporary Okinawan Fiction AbstractThis paper examines magical realism in Okinawa bungaku (Okinawan literature) with a special focus on the literary works of Medoruma Shun. The central research questions are what kind of Okinawan realities these magical-realistic texts point towards and which real problems thus become obvious. Against the theoretical background regarding the discussions on magical realism in literary science, qualitative analyses of the two short stories ‘Akai yashi no ha’ (1992) and ‘Umukaji tō chiritei’ (1999) are conducted. The findings of these analyses show that the narrative mode of magical realism is used to point towards post-colonial power relations and to express a political critique of contemporary relationships with mainland Japan and the United States from an Okinawan point of view. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies de Gruyter

Fantastic Realities: Magical Realism in Contemporary Okinawan Fiction

Kamerer, Tamara
Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 5 (1): 22 – Dec 1, 2014
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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2018 Tamara Kamerer, published by Sciendo
ISSN
2521-7038
eISSN
2521-7038
DOI
10.2478/vjeas-2014-0002
Publisher site
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Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines magical realism in Okinawa bungaku (Okinawan literature) with a special focus on the literary works of Medoruma Shun. The central research questions are what kind of Okinawan realities these magical-realistic texts point towards and which real problems thus become obvious. Against the theoretical background regarding the discussions on magical realism in literary science, qualitative analyses of the two short stories ‘Akai yashi no ha’ (1992) and ‘Umukaji tō chiritei’ (1999) are conducted. The findings of these analyses show that the narrative mode of magical realism is used to point towards post-colonial power relations and to express a political critique of contemporary relationships with mainland Japan and the United States from an Okinawan point of view.

Journal

Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2014

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