Shun Medoruma

Shun Medoruma 目取真俊 (born 1960) is, along with Matayoshi Eiki, one of the most important contemporary Okinawan writers. He was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 1997 for his short story A Drop of Water (Suiteki).[1] (Also translated as "Droplets" by Michael Molasky, appearing in the collection of translated stories and poems from Japanese into English titled Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese literature from Okinawa.) In 2000 his short story "Mabuigumi" ("Spirit Stuffing," 1998) won the prestigious Kawabata Yasunari and Kiyama Shōhei literary prizes.[2] Medoruma also wrote the screenplay for the film Fūon:The Crying Wind, which received the Montreal Film Festival Innovation Prize in 2004, and published a novel based on the screenplay the same year. Central themes in Medoruma's literary works are the psychological after-effects of the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese occupation and suppression of Okinawan culture and language, as well as the presence of American soldiers on the islands.

References

  1. ↑ "Okinawa Writers Excel in Literature" – The Okinawa Times 2000/7/21 (Retrieved on January 13, 2008)
  2. ↑ For translations in English of "Mabuigumi" see Medoruma Shun, “Spirit Stuffing” (Mabuigumi), translated by Kyle Ikeda in Fiction International, no. 40 (2007): 64-8 (includes Okinawan/Uchinaaguchi); and Medoruma Shun, “Mabuigumi,” translated by Kyle Ikeda, in MĀNOA: Living Spirit': Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa', vol 23, no. 1, Summer (2011): 112-134.

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