崎山多美の「ゆらてぃく ゆりてぃく」
Sakiyama Tami’s “” [Swinging and Swaying]
JAPANESE TEXT:
Sakiyama, Tami. “Yuratiku yuritiku.” Yuratiku yuritiku. Tokyo: Kōdansha, (2003). 5-108.
1. Introduction
“Yuratiku yuritiku” was published by Kōdansha in 2003 and appears in the volume Yuratiku yuritiku alongside “Hotara panasu yoteki.” Both novellas center on Jirā, a 117-year-old man, and the panasu (oral stories) he tells to his friends Sanrā and Tarā about Hotara Island. The setting and characters are deliberately unrealistic: Hotara Island is imaginary, and all of its residents are over eighty, with some living well past one hundred.
Another defining feature of the novella is Sakiyama’s experimental use of language. She blends standard Japanese with Okinawan languages, challenging linguistic boundaries and foregrounding the act of storytelling itself as a cultural practice.
2. Main Characters
Jirā ジラー
Jirā, the protagonist, is a thin and frail 117-year-old man who lives alone in a shack after losing his family and wife. He often speaks to himself, repeats stories, and frequently remarks that he will soon die. Although he appears indifferent and indecisive, he is also diligent, sociable, and committed to telling his panasu.
Sanrā サンラー
Sanrā is Jirā’s calm and attentive friend. Having just turned eighty, he is considered a “newborn old man.” Innocent and sensitive, Sanrā enjoys listening to Jirā’s stories, and parts of the novella are narrated from his perspective.
Tarā タラー
Tarā is an 88-year-old man with a bold and argumentative personality. Plump and gray-haired, he dislikes ambiguity and speaks his mind freely. Though often critical, he also listens closely to Jirā’s panasu. Tarā and Sanrā are cousins.
Navi ナビィ
Navi was the last daughter of the nīmutwu, a matriarchal family responsible for protecting Hotara’s traditions. She married Jirā when he was sixteen and led the Hotara Upunaka Festival. Believed to communicate with the island’s tutelary god, Ushumeganashi, Navi could foresee the island’s future. She died between the ages of seventy-three and eighty.
Umichiru ウミチル（思千瑠）
Umichiru was born as a purimun—a term used for outsiders who spoke a different language and lived apart from the community. Considered dangerous and transgressive, she possessed strong physical and sexual agency. After ending a relationship with Sanrā, she became Jirā’s mistress. Umichiru later committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea.
3. Plot Summary
Section 1 (5–9)
On Hotara Island, the dead are wrapped in bougainvillea, placed on rafts, and sent out to sea, where their spirits drift endlessly. For many years, no children have been born on the island, leaving all residents over eighty. This condition began when the Hotara Upunaka Festival ceased. The story unfolds through Jirā’s recollections.
Section 2 (9–15)
Jirā claims he saw a water bubble dancing on Irizaki Beach. Sanrā and Tarā initially mock him, but Jirā insists on its reality. The bubble dances, accompanied by the sound of a shami, before transforming into a woman who emerges from the sea.
Section 3 (15–27)
Though Tarā doubts the story, he refrains from interrupting. Sanrā suspects the woman’s identity but remains silent. Jirā, however, is convinced the woman is not Navi, noting that she behaves in ways Navi never did.
Section 4 (28–34)
Jirā recalls his affair with Umichiru during a period when Navi ignored him. Haunted by Umichiru’s voice, he struggles to sleep. His mother, Kami, comforts him and urges him to forget Umichiru so that Navi will return.
Section 5 (34–54)
Jirā recounts Umichiru’s background. Her mother, Chirū, was labeled purimun for her idleness and shocking appearance. Chirū later formed a relationship with Magi Ikiga, a foreigner, and gave birth to Umichiru.
Section 6 (53–61)
After the Hotara Upunaka Festival, Jirā learns that Navi is dying. Villagers gather at the Nīmutwu House to hear her final words. Before dying, Navi sings a song, marking the transfer of spiritual authority.
Section 7 (61–71)
Jirā weeps as he recalls Navi’s death. Sanrā notices Tarā crying as well and remembers that Tarā once had a sexual relationship with Navi. Feeling excluded, Sanrā grows jealous and concludes that the water woman must be Umichiru.
Section 8 (72–108)
After Jirā finishes his story, Tarā returns home, and Sanrā goes to Irizaki Beach in search of the woman. The next day, the island lord announces a joint funeral for Jirā and Kanimega. Their bodies are wrapped in vines and sent out to sea.
Commentary:
The novella’s emotional core lies in the shifting relationships among the characters. Romantic and sexual ties—particularly involving Navi and Umichiru—create tension among Jirā, Sanrā, and Tarā. These relationships are gradually revealed through layered flashbacks.
Conflict also arises through storytelling itself. Although Tarā initially mocks Jirā’s panasu, he gradually listens with respect, anticipating Jirā’s death. On Hotara Island, listening attentively to the dying is a moral obligation.
The novella opens and closes with funerals, reinforcing its cyclical structure. The addition of Kanimega’s death surprises readers and underscores the fragility of the community. The identity of the water woman remains unresolved, suggesting she may be Umichiru, a ghost, a projection of desire, or a sign of Jirā’s impending death.
4. Setting
“Yuratiku yuritiku” is set on the fictional Hotara Island, where all residents are elderly due to the unexplained absence of childbirth. The island resembles Kudaka Island, historically considered sacred and associated with the Izaihō Festival, which ceased in 1978.
The narrative timeframe spans from the prewar period to Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. References to fūsō (open-air burial) situate the story historically, as the practice was abolished after World War II.
In interviews, Sakiyama explains that Hotara Island is intentionally fictional, allowing her to critique stereotypes of Okinawa as mystical while reflecting the exaggerative nature of panasu storytelling.
5. Point of View
The story is narrated in third person, alternating primarily between Jirā’s and Sanrā’s perspectives. Readers gain access to their thoughts and memories, but not to those of other characters. Flashbacks are presented in an objective tone, creating ambiguity about their accuracy.
This narrative distance mirrors the instability of elderly memory and positions the narrator as a transmitter of taboo island knowledge to outsiders—namely, the readers.
6. Symbolism
Bougainvillea イカダカズラ
Bougainvillea appears exclusively in funeral scenes. On Hotara Island, it is believed to prevent the soul from escaping the body. Sakiyama explicitly links the flower to human souls, culminating in imagery of two floating “souls” drifting on the waves. Kurashīno notes that bougainvillea is often considered a “soul flower,” enhancing its symbolic resonance.
7. Writing Style
Sakiyama employs furigana, mixed scripts, and invented sounds to disrupt standard Japanese. The shami sound, punctuated unusually, encourages readers to imagine rhythm and sound bodily. As Gushiken Arata observes, Sakiyama uses katakana to mark Okinawan words as linguistically distinct, challenging the dominance of standard Japanese.
8. Cultural Background
Mizunoe-Tatsu-Year 壬辰年
Jirā was born in a Mizunoe-Tatsu year, which is the 29th year in the 60-year Chinese zodiac cycle. This reference emphasizes his extraordinary longevity and situates his life within cyclical time rather than linear history.
The Sexagenary Cycle
9. Criticism
Ōshiro, Tatsuhiro. “Tochaku no hyōgen.” Ōshiro Tatsuhiro zenshū 13: Essē 2. Tokyo: Benjō, 2002. 420-6. Print.
Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, a prominent Okinawan writer and critic, examines the growing use of Okinawan language in postwar literature in his essay “Tochaku no hyōgen.” He traces its expansion from his own work in the late 1950s to later writers such as Medoruma Shun and Sakiyama Tami. While critical of language use motivated by ethnic pride alone, Ōshiro praises the themes and stylistic ambition of “Yuratiku yuritiku.” However, he questions Sakiyama’s choice of the island’s name, arguing that deriving “Hotara” from a Japanese word contradicts her linguistic sensitivity.
Kurosawa, Ariko. “Sakiyama Tami no yuratiku yuritiku o yuntaku hintaku yomu.” Tokyo: Seidosha, 2001. Vol 33. 188-94. Print.
Kurosawa Ariko, a literary scholar specializing in Okinawa literature, focuses on the novella’s internal aesthetics and narrative structure. She highlights Sakiyama’s reworking of Ryukyuan origin myths and praises her portrayal of purimun, particularly Chirū, as a figure who resists stereotypical images of Okinawan women. Kurosawa also argues that the novella’s ending—oscillating between existence and absence—resembles a ritual farewell, suggesting that Yuratiku yuritiku itself functions as a literary funeral for disappearing island narratives.
10. Themes
The Extinction of Remote Island Communities
When a community, tradition, or culture is heading toward extinction, people usually try to revive them, but Sakiyama describes Hotara Island as being different: None of the villagers, except Navi, take any action to prevent the island community from going extinct. Quite the contrary, the villagers seem to assume that the island community is doomed (8). The deadly fact is that the villagers can no longer have children. Though they have had many physical relationships, they have failed to procreate. Now that the villagers are much older, they assume that having children is impossible.
In spite of this, the villagers don’t leave the island, nor do they look for alternative ways to keep the community alive. Generally, on remote islands in Okinawa, when students graduate from junior high school, they go to a high school on Okinawa’s mainland or stay and help their family with farming or other work. However, on Hotara Island, the villagers strongly resist ever leaving the island (6-7). Even purimun don’t leave the island once they land arrive here (37). All of this seems to suggest that the island itself doesn’t want people to live.
Hotara Island is moving inexorably toward extinction, so Sanrā, who might be the last survivor, needs to take charge of preserving the island’s stories. The narration mentions that villagers tend not to go outside unless there is an emergency (6-7). The impending demise of the community is an emergency, so Sanrā needs to leave Hotara Island to do panasu if the community is to survive—even as a memory. Perhaps that’s why Sanrā’s point of view is incorporated into the story, to emphasize that the community seems likely to go extinct. And its stories will be lost, too.
The Importance of Story Telling
As long as people keep telling a story, the story won’t vanish. In fact, the narrator quotes an old panasu to remind listeners that the community must preserve itself: “Our island has been neglected by the world; that’s part of being Hotara” (108). This is especially true for a community that does not have a written language. Like other communities without a written language, Hotara Island highly values the role of speaking and story-telling. For example, when ikiga (men) do panasu, the speaker is likely to be an old person who is growing weak (27), so the community insists that people listen attentively to their final stories.
In Okinawa, telling stories has become part of the culture. This is probably because of the influence of Okinawan language on people’s thinking. According to Ōshiro Tatsuhiro (2002), Okinawan language didn’t have a written system a long time ago, so when people wanted to pass down information, their thoughts, or feelings, they needed to repeatedly tell their stories so that listeners could remember. In “Yuratiku yuritiku,” Jirā tends to repeat himself (11), but Sanrā and Tarā still listen attentively. Furthermore, in Hotara Island’s society, villagers prioritize the dying words of people more than anything (24). This is because when people die, they will never be able to tell their stories again. Therefore, remembering these final words is essential to preserving the memories of the dying person, and by extension, the memories of the Hotara Island community.
11. Discussion Questions
1. Why is Jirā’s panasu used in the story? What is Sakiyama trying to say about the role of story-telling in rural or island communities?
2. How can Jirā know that the bubble woman might not be Navi? Is the bubble woman real? Who or what is she?
3. How does Jirā try to convince Sanrā and Tarā to believe his panasu? In what ways does he succeed or fail?
4. Why did Jirā marry Navi? Why did she marry him?
5. What is unusual about the sexual relationships on the island? How should modern readers view such casual relationships?
6. Why do villagers think Chirū is purimun? In what ways does this reflect their own biases or prejudices?
7. Clearly, Hotara Island will go extinct with Navi’s death, so why don’t villagers take action to protect it? What is most important for the villagers?
8. Why does Tarā cry during Jirā’s story? What does this suggest about their relationships?
9. What does bougainvillea symbolize? Why do the villagers use it for funeral rites?
10. Why does the narrator refer to another panasu at the end of the story?
11. What does the novella teach us about island communities and about the role of story-telling in such communities?
12. Works Cited
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Original Report by Une Yūta. Edited and revised by Kasumi Sminkey.