‘오키나와 문학’이라는 물음 -사키야마 다미(崎山多美) 바람과 물의 이야기(風水譚) 의 방법

Abstract

Literature is no longer an abstract discourse. It is a literary field of society that builds social hegemony through the symbolic capital of inherent linguistic assets and literariness. With this in mind, ‘Okinawa literature’, a challenge to the literary field of the Japanese mainland, is a kind of social act that competes with the literature of the mainland with certain kind of strategy and tactic. In this paper, we will examine what is the category of “Okinawa Literature” that the mainland has postulated, and what are the limitations of aesthetic tendencies of Okinawa literature and what possibilities they have opened up as well. First of all, this paper critically examines the way the mainland selects ‘Okinawa literature’. For instance, the Akutagawa Prize, awarded twice a year in the mainland, provides symbolic authority and economic capital as well as providing writers with an opportunity to debut. Furthermore, the selection of awards reflects the political and social atmosphere and issues in Japan, as was the case with Okinawa literature. Oshiro Tatsuhiro’s <Cocktail Party>, which won the Akutagawa Prize for the first time in Okinawa, is a typical example. Since then, while the mainland's interest in Okiwnawa literature has continued, there is a clear tendency to categorize the topics that both sides acknowledge and approve. In the meantime, there is a writer named Tami Sakiyama who tries to sense Okinawa in a way that has not been accepted from the complicities of both parties. Especially, in this paper, we are going to pay attention to the novel <The Story of Water and Wind> of Sakiyama. This novel has a tendency to deviate from the various political desires and discriminatory imaginations required of Okinawan literature. <The Story of Water and Wind> presents effective concerns which can be liberated from the complicities between the mainland and Okinawa.