Fantastic Realities: Magical Realism in Contemporary Okinawan Fiction

This paper examines magical realism in Okinawa bungaku (Okinawan literature) with a special focus on the literary works of Medoruma Shun. The central research questions are what kind of Okinawan realities these magical-realistic texts point towards and which real problems thus become obvious. Against the theoretical background regarding the discussions on magical realism in literary science, qualitative analyses of the two short stories ‘Akai yashi no ha’ (1992) and ‘Umukaji tō chiritei’ (1999) are conducted. The findings of these analyses show that the narrative mode of magical realism is used to point towards post-colonial power relations and to express a political critique of contemporary relationships with mainland Japan and the United States from an Okinawan point of view.