Reading Okinawa

Medoruma, Shun. Niji no Tori [Rainbow Bird]. Tokyo: Kageshobo, 2006.


1. Introduction

Niji no Tori is perhaps the most shocking novel by Okinawa’s Akutagawa Prize winning writer, Medoruma Shun. I first learned about the book when reading an article in the 2007 February issue of Subaru, a popular Japanese literary magazine. Entitled “Okinawa--Disutopia no Bungaku” [Okinawa: Dystopian Literature], the article was a “conversation” involving Sakiyama Tami, Kurosawa Ariko (a colleague of mine), and two other researchers. Intrigued by their comments, I rushed to pick up a copy, but after trips to several bookstores, and having every store search their data base, I was forced to give up my search. Why doesn’t Okinawa do more to promote their own writers? This was the latest book by the most popular writer in the prefecture, and it was impossible to find a copy in some of the biggest bookstores. Eventually, of course, I did get a copy through amazon.co.jp, but after reading the book, I’m left wondering if it’s not just as well. Maybe the shocking content was the reason it wasn’t on the shelves.

The novel is a graphically violent and provocative account of the dark side of Okinawa—and seems to suggest that nothing short of a violent response directed towards American military personnel is likely to have an impact on the military base problem. The publisher’s blurb on the book jacket reads: “The violence and anger of this island with military bases--when will it be directed towards ‘them’”? “Them,” of course, refers to the Americans.


2. Plot

The story follows the doomed relationship between Katsuya, a young man under the thumb of Higa, a slightly older young man who has been violently bullying Katsuya since their time together in junior high school; and Mayu, a young girl who has been forced into prostitution by Higa. Though Katsuya is Mayu’s pimp, he himself is a victim of Higa, who has terrorized both Katsuya and Mayu into acquiescing to their self-destructive predicaments.

Katsuya’s job is to supervise Mayu and to take photographs of her johns. He is expected to periodically provide Higa with money and photographs, which are used for blackmailing the johns. Early in the story, Mayu takes a customer (who turns out to be a junior high school teacher) to her apartment, in violation of the rules that Higa has laid down for Katsuya to enforce. At the apartment, Katsuya knocks the man down to prevent having their operation exposed, and then Mayu uncharacteristically begins to abuse the man. The graphically described scene depicts Mayu’s spraying the man with steaming hot water, and then forcing matchsticks into the man’s penis after getting him excited. Katsuya photographs the scene and threatens to release the photos if the man talks. He then hides the film, instead of delivering it to Higa, because he fears the repercussions of having allowed a customer into the apartment in the first place.

As Mayu’s health deteriorates (one suspects from the drugs that Higa has told Katsuya to give her), Katsuya has an increasingly difficult time making payments to Higa. Katsuya borrows money from his mother but eventually can no longer satisfy Higa, who then retaliates. Higa and his cohorts discover the photographs that Katsuya took of the junior high school teacher, and bring Mayu and Katsuya to their den. In the violent climax, Mayu kills Higa’s cohort (named Matsuda), kills and inserts a microphone into the vagina of the young girl that Higa’s group has kidnapped, and then sets Higa on fire. Katsuya decides to flee to the Yanbaru section of Okinawa in the north in pursuit of the legendary rainbow bird. Before they arrive, however, Mayu kills a young American girl.


3. Setting

The novel is set against the backdrop of the 1995 rape of an Okinawan girl by three American servicemen. As Katsuya and Mayu struggle to survive, readers are constantly reminded of the US military presence and the Okinawan protests against the rape. Medoruma also makes clear that many of the distortions in Okinawan society can be traced back to the military bases. For instance, Katsuya’s two brothers have become indolent as a result of living off their father’s profits from renting his land to the military. Similarly, Katsuya’s mother is so obsessed with her economic independence that she has little time for her family. At the same time, the hidden violence of the society (as represented by Higa) is shown to have infiltrated the schools and to have colored people’s outlooks on life.


4. Theme

Moral Disconnect

Katsuya’s mother’s absurd view of the rape is that the girl’s parents were partly responsible: “Of course, the Americans that attacked the girl were wrong, but don’t you think the parents were wrong to send an elementary school girl out at night to do shopping on her own? They’ve been living next to the base for over a dozen years, so they should have known the dangers” (173). She then goes on to accuse the protesters of hypocrisy: “Yeah, even I know that the Americans were wrong, but I don’t understand why people who profit from the Americans, who get money from renting their land to the military, and who are living off the bases are getting so upset?”

My personal feeling is that Medoruma makes the same point (without all the gratuitous violence) in the story “Hope.” A translation of that story can be found online here:

“Hope” (1999)
by Medoruma Shun
Translated by Steve Rabson


Report by Kasumi Sminkey.