Shun Medoruma (目取真 俊, Medoruma Shun; born 10 October 1960) is a Japanese writer, who, along with Tatsuhiro Oshiro, Tami…
Shun Medoruma (目取真 俊, Medoruma Shun; born 10 October 1960) is a Japanese writer, who, along with Tatsuhiro Oshiro, Tami Sakiyama, and Eiki Matayoshi, is one of the most important contemporary writers from Okinawa, Japan. Early in his career he won the 11th Ryukyu Shimpō Short Story Prize in 1983 for "Taiwan Woman: Record of a Fish Shoal" ("Gyogunki"), translated by Shi-Lin Loh in Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa, and the New Okinawan Literature Prize in 1986 for "Walking the Street Named Peace Boulevard" ("Heiwa doori to nazukerareta machi o aruite"). He was awarded the 27th Kyushu Arts Festival Literary Prize and the 117th Akutagawa Prize in 1997 for his short story "A Drop of Water" ("Suiteki"). (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. 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. His critically acclaimed novel In the Woods of Memory (眼の奥の森, Me no oku no mori; translated by Kasumi Sminkey) is the first full-length novel by an Okinawan writer to be translated and published in English.
Famous People from Okinawa Prefecture
Okinawa Prefecture: 5 people
Kiyoshi Arakaki (新垣 清, Arakaki Kiyoshi; October 17, 1954) is a karate practitioner, historian, novelist, and the…
Kiyoshi Arakaki (新垣 清, Arakaki Kiyoshi; October 17, 1954) is a karate practitioner, historian, novelist, and the founder of Okinawa Karate-Do Muso-Kai.
Tatsuhiro Ōshiro (大城 立裕, Ōshiro Tatsuhiro; 19 September 1925 – 27 October 2020) was an Okinawan novelist and playwright…
Tatsuhiro Ōshiro (大城 立裕, Ōshiro Tatsuhiro; 19 September 1925 – 27 October 2020) was an Okinawan novelist and playwright from Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands. He was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 1967 for his novella of the same year, The Cocktail Party, which has been adapted for the stage and made into a film. Ōshiro has also been an innovator of the traditional Ryukyuan narrative dance form known as kumi odori. Having added twenty new pieces to the repertoire, Ōshiro is credited as having "single-handedly revived the genre that originated in the 18th century" by incorporating Okinawa shibai (dramas in the Okinawan language) and distinctive rhythms to construct a fluid, hybrid cultural identity. His writings have been noted for making Okinawan culture and history accessible to Japanese readership, while his more popular works have been critically praised for "offering an acute perspective on the psychological and moral implications of war and military occupation."
Seiji Shimota (霜多正次, Shimota Seiji; September 5, 1913 – April 16, 2003) was a Japanese novelist. Born in Nakijin…
Seiji Shimota (霜多正次, Shimota Seiji; September 5, 1913 – April 16, 2003) was a Japanese novelist. Born in Nakijin, Okinawa, he attended local elementary and middle schools, but continued his high school education in Kumamoto, where he began writing novels and studied with Haruo Umezaki. He graduated from the School of English Literature, Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1940, he was conscripted and sent to Bougainville Island. Towards the end of the war, in May 1945, he surrendered to Australian forces and was sent to a POW camp. After being released, he did not return to Okinawa (which at the time was occupied by the Americans), but went to Tokyo instead, where he wrote novels while working in the offices of Shin Nihon Bungakukai ("New Japan Literature Society"), a leftist writers' association. In 1950, he published Kiyama ittō-hei to senkyōshi ("Private Kiyama and the Missionary") in the magazine "Shin Nihon Bungaku" and established himself as a writer. In 1953, he returned for a visit for the first time after the war to Okinawa, and started using Okinawan themes in his writings. For the novel Okinawashima, which was published in installments in Shin Nihon Bungaku ("New Japanese Literature") in 1956, he was awarded the "Mainichi Publications Literary Award". In 1957, with fellow writers Tatsukichi Nishino, Kim Tal-su and Sei Kubota, he started the Riarizumu Kenkyukai ("Realism Research Association"). He was expelled from the New Japan Literature Society after relations between him and Teruo Takei, the de facto leader of the Society, were soured by ideological differences. At a conference in 1964, Shimota disagreed with other executives of the Society on numerous issues, such as in regard to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, in which he took the Japanese Communist Party's position on the issue. When the Nippon minshushugi bungaku domei ("Japanese Democratic Literary Alliance") was established in 1965, he was named vice-chairman. In 1971, he was awarded the Takiji-Yuriko Award for Akemodoro. He died of pneumonia in Musashino, Tokyo, on April 16, 2003.
Makishi Satoko (Japanese: 真喜志 智子), known professionally as Cocco (こっこ), is a Japanese pop/folk rock singer.