1st Edition
Okinawan War Memory Transgenerational Trauma and the War Fiction of Medoruma Shun
Introduction: Transgenerational War Memory in Okinawa Part I: Simmering Awareness 1. Unarticulated Memory and Traumatic Recall in The Crying Wind and Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard Part II: Vicarious Imagination and the 'Magical Real' 2. Unrecognized Signs and Unexplained Phenomena in Droplets 3. Subjective and Objective Fiction: Medoruma's Spirit Stuffing and Ōshiro’s Island of the Gods Part III: Portraying Second-Generation Conscious Engagement 4. Critical "Sentimentalism" and Conscious Engagement in Tree of Butterflies 5. Multi-Sensory Memory and Sites of Trauma in Forest at the Back of My Eye 6. Epilogue
Biography
Kyle Ikeda is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Vermont, USA.
"Through a judicious use of key concepts on transgenerational trauma gleaned from Holocaust studies Ikeda succeeds in showing how Medoruma, a second-generation war survivor, can write about war experience that he, born fifteen years after the end of the war, lacks. Although this is a tremendous achievement that underscores the power of Medoruma's literary imagination, to state that a writer without first hand experience can create compelling war fiction is not nearly as important as the convincing reasons Ikeda provides readers for why Medoruma writes the war fiction for which he is widely acclaimed."
Davinder L. Bhowmik, Japanese Language and Literature
