In the Woods of Memory Read online

  IN THE WOODS OF MEMORY

  Shun Medoruma

  TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE AND WITH A PREFACE BY TAKUMA SMINKEY

  AFTERWORD BY KYLE IKEDA

  Stone Bridge Press Berkeley, California

  Published by

  Stone Bridge Press

  P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707

  [email protected] www.stonebridge.com

  English translation ©2017 Takuma Sminkey.

  Japanese text ©2009 Kage Shobo Publishing Co.

  This work is a translation of 眼の奥の森 [Me no oku no mori] by Shun Medoruma, published in Japanese in 2009 by Kage Shobo Publishing Co., Tokyo, Japan.

  Front cover background photograph “Wild Iriomote,” © Sam Spicer. Villagers photograph by Reinhart T. Kowallis, used by permission. Photograph of American GIs on Iejima is believed to be in public domain.

  Chart on pp. 16–17 based on an original concept by Sayuri Shimanaka.

  Book design and layout by Linda Ronan.

  First edition 2017.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  p-ISBN: 978-1-61172-037-2

  e-ISBN: 978-1-61172-924-5

  CONTENTS

  Translator’s Preface

  IN THE WOODS OF MEMORY

  Fumi (1945)

  Seiji (1945)

  Kayō (2005)

  Hisako (2005)

  Hisako and Fumi (2005)

  Seiji (2005)

  Okinawan Writer (2005)

  Jay’s Grandfather (1945)

  Bullied Girl (2005)

  Tamiko (2005)

  Robert Higa (2005)

  Afterword by Kyle Ikeda

  TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

  I knew little about Okinawa when I was hired by Okinawa International University in April 2004. Like others living in Japan, I knew there were many US military bases here but viewed Okinawa as being something of an idyllic paradise, akin to Hawaii. That all changed on August 13, 2004, shortly after the end of the first semester. Early in the afternoon, I was entering my office when I saw a US helicopter moving across the window. Obviously in distress, the helicopter was spitting smoke and twisting out of control. I ran to the window and saw it disappear behind some trees. From the angle, I assumed that it had crashed into the street. Without thinking, I dashed down the steps and ran toward the huge clouds of smoke. I was there in a minute, before hardly anyone else. The first thing I noticed was that the helicopter had actually crashed into our main administration building! I saw one of the pilots being helped to his feet. Within minutes, a group of Marines from Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is located directly next to my university, came running up, and I was asked to move back.

  Later, I chatted with one of the Marines stationed at the perimeter. “Yeah, these people always want to see what’s going on,” he said. I nodded noncommittally, but he seemed to see me as being on his side. Then I noticed that smoke was pouring over a group of students gathered in front of a nearby building. So I said, “This smoke could be dangerous to breathe, don’t you think? Maybe you should do something.” The second I said that, his attitude toward me abruptly changed, and he officiously stated, “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” It became clear that his job was to secure the perimeter, not to protect the local people.

  In the weeks that followed, my quiet university became the site of daily protests, investigations, and intense media attention. On September 12, in the largest protest in nearly a decade, approximately 30,000 people gathered on campus to protest the presence of M.C.A.S. Futenma. Not surprisingly, the crash intensified the pressure on closing this dangerous base, which is situated in the densely populated city of Ginowan. Actually, the Japanese and US governments agreed to close the base back in 1996, but the plan has never been implemented due to the inability of the two governments to find a replacement facility. In 2017, the problem remains unresolved, and local protests have only intensified, as the Japanese government has become determined to proceed with construction of a new base in the seaside village of Henoko in northern Okinawa—in complete disregard of Okinawa’s reasonable request to have the base relocated outside the prefecture.

  The helicopter-crash incident completely changed my view of Okinawa. As an American living in a place that my country had invaded and occupied, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat awkward and self-conscious. Not only did I become keenly aware of how the legacy of the Battle of Okinawa impacts the daily lives of people living here, I also became more motivated to educate myself about the prefecture’s history and culture. Of course, reading as much Okinawan literature as possible has been an important part of that education, as I’ve always believed that literature is the best way to understand the heart and soul of a people. After reading works by Tatsuhiro Ōshiro, Mineo Higashi, Eiki Matayoshi, Tami Sakiyama, Shun Medoruma, and others, I’ve gained a deep understanding of Okinawan people and their painful history. Unfortunately, much of this literature still hasn’t been translated into English.

  About Medoruma and his work

  Shun Medoruma won the coveted Akutagawa Prize in 1997 for “Suiteki” [Droplets], a short story praised for its use of magic realism and literary sophistication. Since then, he has won many other literary prizes, and his works have been the focus of books of literary criticism and analysis, both in Japanese and in English. Medoruma has also been in the news for his political activism, especially his participation in the protests against construction of the new US military base in Henoko. He was arrested on April 1, 2016, when he paddled his canoe into a restricted area off the coast of Camp Schwab as part of the protest.

  Me no oku no mori [In the Woods of Memory] was first published in twelve installments in the quarterly Zenya from Fall 2004 through Summer 2007. After being revised and reorganized into ten chapters, it was published in book form by Kage Shobo in 2009. The novel has received high praise from critics, such as Sadatoshi Ōshiro, who lauds Medoruma for “his powerful use of language in confronting the taboos of memory,” and Yoshiaki Koshikawa, who writes that the novel brings Medoruma “one more solid step toward becoming a world-renowned literary figure.” Personally, I consider this novel to be Medoruma’s masterpiece.

  The novel describes two related incidents that took place on a small island during the Battle of Okinawa: the rape of a young woman, and a young man’s attempt to get revenge. These two main stories are narrated through various points of view, including those of two Americans. Two chapters are set in 1945, while the other eight are set in 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war. The focus of the novel, then, is on how past events have impacted the present.

  The opening scenes of the novel take place in the middle of May 1945. At this point in the Battle of Okinawa, US forces had occupied the northern parts of the island, even though intense fighting was still raging in the south. The main setting of the novel, though never directly mentioned, is a village on Yagaji, a small island just off the northwest coast of the Okinawan mainland. The port at which the US soldiers are working is certainly the one at Unten, located on the mainland directly across from Yagaji. US forces occupied the port early in the battle, long before fighting ended in the south.

  For Americans—and for mainland Japanese, too—it’s difficult to see the connections between World War II and the present, but for Okinawans, those connections are a daily fact of life. This is partly because of the great costs of the Battle of Okinawa, which involved heavy bombing, group suicides, and large numbers of civilian casualties, nearly
one-third of the population. As a result, nearly everyone who experienced the war suffered some degree of trauma. Not only do most Okinawan families have relatives who died in the war; they have relatives who were traumatized, too. In addition, the US military bases scattered throughout the prefecture are a constant and visual reminder of the lingering effects of the war. The negative effects of the base economy, the threats to public safety and health, and the regular occurrence of crimes and accidents have kept the bases on the front pages of Okinawan newspapers practically every day.

  Shun Medoruma often bases his stories on accounts he’s heard from relatives. Although the main plot lines of In the Woods of Memory are fiction, they are based on various real-life incidents. In a May 2016 interview published in the Okinawa Times, Medoruma said that the rape was based on a story he heard from his mother, who lived on Yagaji during the war. He also discusses the incident in one of his collections of essays. There are also parallels to the infamous 1995 Okinawa rape incident, in which three US servicemen raped an elementary school girl.

  The revenge plot has similarities to the 1945 Katsuyama killing incident, in which Okinawans from a village near Nago murdered three US Marines in retaliation for raping village women shortly after the Battle of Okinawa. Medoruma’s descriptions of prewar education, detention camps, and the role of interpreters during the war are all accurate.

  About this translation

  In the Woods of Memory poses many challenges for a translator. Medoruma’s experimental use of narrative techniques, mixing of voices, avoidance of quotation marks, and use of Okinawan language make the text a difficult one to render into English. Needless to say, I did my best to produce a translation faithful to the original, but I’d like English readers to be aware of some important changes I decided to make. First, I added chapter titles that identify the point of view and setting of each chapter. Since there are no titles in the original text, Japanese readers are likely to be initially confused before figuring these out on their own, but for English readers the burden would be even heavier, especially for those less familiar with Japanese names or Okinawan history. In addition, I’m sure the titles will make it easier for readers to remember the names and to discuss the novel with others. By the way, I divided the first chapter of the original into two chapters, since they’re narrated from completely different points of view.

  Second, I decided to use quotation dashes to more clearly mark dialogue, except in the final chapter, where their use would have been inappropriate. In the Japanese text, Medoruma usually refrains from using quotation marks, no doubt to create a more stream-of-consciousness feel to the narration. In Japanese, speakers can be indicated through levels of politeness, the use of pronouns, and in other ways unique to the language, so a direct translation without quotation marks would be confusing. Using dashes seemed like a good compromise in the spirit of the original. In addition, I used italics to mark internal dialogue.

  Third, I avoided using the asterisks and letters that Medoruma uses in place of names in some of the later chapters. Replacing names with a letter, blank space, or symbol is a Japanese literary convention not often seen in English literature—and one that I’ve never liked—so I solved the problem by using pronouns, using the implied name, or assigning a name to the character. Concerning names, I followed the Western convention of putting the given name first. Readers will notice, of course, that most Japanese characters are referred to by their given names, with the obvious exceptions of Kayō, the ward chief, and Matsumoto, the Okinawan writer’s friend.

  There was, however, one difficulty in translating the novel for which I couldn’t find a satisfactory solution: how to translate Okinawan language. Translating dialect or a secondary language is always difficult for translators, but the problem is especially daunting for In the Woods of Memory. To begin with, the Ryukyuan languages are not dialects but independent languages, which are not mutually intelligible with Japanese. More importantly, Okinawan language reflects Okinawa’s complex political relationship with Japan. After the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed and became Okinawa Prefecture in 1879, the Japanese government implemented an assimilation policy, which included discouraging the use of Okinawan language. Generally speaking, those assimilation policies were successful, so that by the time of the war, most Okinawans viewed themselves as Japanese and spoke the Japanese language. However, the local language continued to be spoken in many homes and communities, though the pressure to use Japanese outside the home was strong. During the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese soldiers viewed those who spoke the local language with suspicion, sometimes even shooting them as spies. Today, the Ryukyuan languages are considered endangered, but the prefectural government and various local groups are making some effort to revive them. Not surprisingly, the Japanese government has not been supportive of such efforts.

  In the novel, the characters that most frequently use Okinawan language (Northern Okinawan) are those who lived in the village for a long time, most notably Seiji, Fumi, and Kayō. Seiji, a young fisherman who had to drop out of school at a young age, speaks only the Okinawan language. I’m sure English readers can see the irony in the fact that although Seiji passionately fights to defend Japan and his village, he cannot speak standard Japanese. Fumi and Kayō, on the other hand, are proficient in standard Japanese, though they often use the local language when they’re with other villagers.

  Medoruma writes for both a Japanese and Okinawan audience, so in order to convey the use of Okinawan language, he adds a gloss to the right of the Japanese text, which allows readers to “hear” the local language—even if they don’t understand it. On top of this, the Japanese is usually given an Okinawan feel, which also conveys that the character is not using standard Japanese. In most chapters, such glosses appear only sporadically, and are relatively easy to ignore, but in the two Seiji chapters the pages are crowded with double lines of text, making the use of Okinawan language extremely conspicuous. The political implication of this should be obvious: Medoruma’s use of Okinawan language directly challenges Japanese readers to recognize and accept linguistic and cultural differences.

  It’s impossible to fully recreate the complexity of Medoruma’s use of local language in English, so I ask readers to simply keep the issue in mind, especially for the characters I mentioned above. In my translation, I tried to capture the feel of the local language in idiomatic English, while providing hints that a character is using Okinawan language. The best approximation for an American audience might have been to translate the Okinawan language into Hawaiian, since Okinawa and Hawaii share many similarities: both were formerly kingdoms, both were territories before being annexed, both went through periods of assimilation, both have US military bases, and significantly, both have indigenous languages that are endangered. Such an approach, however, would have been impractical. To begin with, the introduction of Hawaiian would be inconsistent with the rest of the text and would distract readers from the situation in Okinawa. Furthermore, crowding the text with a gloss of a language that most English readers wouldn’t understand would be unwieldy and confusing. Still, the comparison should give American readers some sense of the radical nature of Medoruma’s use of local language.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to acknowledge the assistance I received in producing this translation. To begin with, I’d like to thank those who guided me in my reading of the original Japanese text, especially Professor Ariko Kurosawa, who let me attend her graduate school classes at Okinawa International University. I’d also like to express my thanks to her students, who generously shared their notes and research. Next, I’d like to thank those who provided advice on the early drafts of my translation, most especially Jonathan Rankine and the anonymous reviewer for University of Hawaii Press. Okinawa International University provided me financial support so that I could spend a year at the University of Vermont doing research and revising my manuscript. During that time, I received invaluable support and encouragement from Professor Kyle Ik
eda and the students in his classes. Professor Ikeda has been generous with sharing his insights into Medoruma’s work, has provided invaluable feedback on my translations, and has always encouraged me in my research on Okinawan literature. I deeply appreciate his assistance. My translation would never have been published, however, without Stone Bridge Press. I’d like to express my appreciation to head editor Peter Goodman and others at Stone Bridge for their hard work in making this valuable novel available in English. Most of all, I’d like to thank my wife, Yoko, for all of her love, encouragement, and assistance. Her firsthand knowledge of Okinawan culture, history, and language was quite helpful, and without her encouragement, this translation would never have been completed.

  Takuma Sminkey

  Okinawa, May 2017

  IN THE WOODS OF MEMORY

  CHARACTER MAP

  JAPAN AND OKINAWA

  FUMI [1945]

  —The Americans are coming! Hisako called out in alarm.

  Fumi was searching for shellfish on the seabed and could feel the waves swirling between her legs. She raised her head and looked where Hisako was pointing. At the recently constructed port on the opposite shore, a dozen American soldiers were working. Perhaps because their jobs were done, several had tossed off their clothes and were diving into the ocean. One soldier was already swimming toward Fumi and her friends. He had a considerable lead by the time the other three stopped shouting and started diving in after him.

  It was only about two hundred meters from the opposite side, and since the small northern island running parallel to the main Okinawan island formed a narrow passageway, the sea was peaceful. Local fishermen called the inner passage “the bosom,” and whenever typhoons threatened, they fled here from the high seas for safe haven. During spring tides, the current was dangerous, but at other times, even children could swim to the other side.