마타요시 에이키 문학에 나타난 ‘타자’와의 교섭 과정: “오키나와인 주체의 자세”를 묻다

Abstract

Matayoshi Eiki is one of the prolific writers after the post-war period Okinawa and Japanese literary world. His literature depicts Okinawa’s communal character as two aspects. First, Matayoshi sets nature and native of Okinawa as the origin of her culture. For example, he reveals conflicts between the US troops and Okinawan by depicting dynamic power in the Okinawan bullfight in his early works. Second, through dealing with relation between Okinawan and foreigners, Matayoshi traces transformation of Okinawan community after the post-war period. In this paper, in order to investigate Okinawa’s communal character in Matayoshi’s literary works from short stories collection of Parachute Soldier’s Present in 1988 to novels in 2000s, I focus on below two aspects. Firstly, by analyzing Matayoshi’s literature, I try to endeavor to reconsider his origin of writing so-called “radius 2km from Urasoe” is not simply reclaims into Okinawa’s beautiful nature. In other words, “radius 2km” not only means nativity of Okinawan, but also shows negotiation and rupture between Okinawans and the US military base. Secondly, through examining awareness of otherness in Matayoshi's literary works, I focus on how Okinawans have developed its community through negotiation with the US military base. Considering that Matayoshi mainly wrote the relation between Okinawan and American, “Ginnemu Yashiki(Ginnemu Mansion)” in 1980 was quite unique novel because it deals with the relationship between Okinawan and Korean in the Okinawan War. However, it is not difficult to say that the relation between Okinawan and Japanese is not visible in Matayoshi’s literature. From this examination of Okinawa’s communal character in Matayoshi’s literary works, we can conclude that Matayoshi tries to asking “Position of Okinawan Subject.” It is also based on his history awareness that Okinawa has participated wars which conducted by old empire of Japan and new empire of USA in Asian region.