The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature

6. Female Shamans: Ōshiro Tatsuhiro and Yuta

C H A P T E R 6 F E M A L E S H A M A N S Òshiro Tatsuhiro and Yuta Mark what radiant state she spreds, In circle round her shining throne, Shooting her beams like silver threds, This this is she alone, Sitting like a Goddes bright In the center of her light, —John Milton, from “Arcades” Cruelty has a Human heart And Jealousy a Human face, Terror, the Human Form Divine And Secrecy, the Human Dress. —William Blake, from “A Divine Image” H itherto this book has examined examples of the “other” or the “alien” taken from the prewar corpus of mainstream Japanese literature, or more properly, literature from mainland Japan. This chapter studies an example of postwar literature written in Okinawa, by a writer born, raised, and resident in Okinawa.1 Okinawa here means the prefecture of Okinawa, not simply the island of this name; it is an archipelago located some four hours from Tokyo by plane. Here I propose to treat the literature of Okinawa as an “Other,” as alien to mainland Japan and its culture. Until 1879 Okinawa—or the Ryükyü kingdom as it was then known—was an independent state, which had close relations with both China and Japan; however, in that year the kingdom was incorporated into the Japanese empire by force. Even acknowledging that “the Ryükyü kingdom had for centuries served two masters, China and Satsuma, paying tribute to both,” as Donald Keene recently wrote, does not vitiate the Öshiro Tatsuhiro and Yuta • 141 significant differences in culture and language that separated Okinawa from Japan proper.2 These differences have been compounded by Okinawa’s period of servitude to another master, the United States of America, from 1951 to 1972, when the United States took control of the island chain and administered it as an American territory. Okinawan attitudes toward Japan have always been complex, as is evidenced by the large number of Okinawans who died in defense of the Japanese empire during the climactic battle of Okinawa in 1945.3 Okinawan attitudes towards the mainland also changed during the period of the American interregnum, as more and more residents of Okinawa came to adopt a version of the standard Tokyo dialect in everyday speech rather than using the myriad dialects of the Okinawa islands.4 Nevertheless, Okinawa has retained its distinctive cultural identity to the present day, not simply because of the existence of the many dialects of Okinawa but also because of the numerous physical differences in topography and climate between Okinawa and the mainland.5 These very real differences have not simply resulted in the sense of alienation that Okinawans writers often experience when they leave their home islands to journey to the mainland but also the strong sensation of the exotic that mainlanders experience when encountering Okinawa and its culture and language. This collision of the exotic and the familiar, the alien and native, has characterized much of the literature written on Okinawa and by writers based in Okinawa. This chapter is concerned with one of the most distinctive features of Okinawan culture, yuta, or female Okinawan shamans, as explored by one of the most famous authors to emerge from Okinawa in the postwar era, Öshiro Tatsuhiro (b.1925), who was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1967 for his novella Kakuterupätii(Cocktail party).6 How to communicate the “alien” to readers is a complex and intriguing problem, and as will be demonstrated, Öshiro’s treatment of this issue has something profound to say about the nature of Okinawan society and its relationship to mainland Japan itself. O shiro and Yuta In 1991 Öshiro Tatsuhiro wrote an article in the Nishi Nippon newspaper about yuta, or female Okinawan shamans. He begins by discussing how even intellectuals such as himself may automatically think, when hearing of someone taken ill, of the phrase ugan busuku, or “not enough prayers.” This attitude derives from the belief that illness and other troubles can be helped by prayer. 142 • Chapter 6 Such a belief is not confined to Okinawa, of course. It may well be that a majority of the peoples of the world would agree with such a sentiment. However, Öshiro goes on to link this belief with the phenomenon of shamans. Yuta differ from other kinds of female mediums, such as itako, found in northern Japan, because they are quite ordinary...