*******************************************
Shun Medoruma (born 1960) is, along with Eiki Matayoshi, 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).(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.) Central themes in Medoruma's literary works are the Japanese occupation and suppression of Okinawan culture and language, as well as the presence of American soldiers on the islands. He describes the structure of the violence forced on Okinawa/Okinawans from Japan and the US, and his stories somehow disclose their sadistic stance on Okinawa/Okinawans while he encourages Okinawans to be the agent of their own islands though he also digs into Okinawans' dark sides.
*****************************
Here is the second short novel【黒い蛇】（Black Snake) written by Medoruma Shun. It was translated by Mr. Naoki Arakaki, a talented professional translater born in Okinawa. This translation project X consists of three members; 【Naoki Arakaki, Fred Lovato, and Shoko Yonaha. Shoko is in charge of this project. Next story is 【花】（Flower). If you'd like to make any contact, send e-mail to: nasaki78@mail.goo.ne.jp
*This translation project X is acknowledged by Shun Medoruma.
『Black Snake】
One summer day, I went catching fish alone in the rice paddies near my house. I had just started elementary school in the spring of that year, and it was my first time to go getting fish by myself. Waterweeds were rocking in a canal carrying water from a spring, and the blades of summer grass, hanging down from a ridge between the rice fields, were also trembling in the canal. While putting my fingers in the stream, bubbles were rising from my fingers, flowing like quicksilver. In the canal, crucian carps and juvenile tilapias were shining like metal shavings, and Siamese fighting fish were waving their blue tails. I was absorbed in following these fish with the fishing net.
Suddenly, I became aware of something shadowy in sight. I straightened up and looked at the upper course of the canal. The clear water was running in the canal between the summer grass that looked like it was sprinkled in white sunlight. Along the surface of the water, a black snake with its head raised was swimming smoothly toward me. I got goose bumps all over and tried to run away hastily, but I was not able to yell out as if my voice had been sucked into a vacuum, and was frozen to the spot. When the black snake came to the place where I stood, the snake turned around to me. It put its head on the fishing net in the water, entwined itself around the bamboo handle of the net and went up the handle. Gleaming black and flicking out its tongue, the snake reached my wrist in a dash. After coiling around my arm and climbing up from my elbow to shoulder, it poked my face and jaw with its nose to look where to go. It found the neck of my T-shirt wide open and slid straight down from the middle of my chest to belly. Though it stopped at the waistband, it moved its head from side to side and burrowed into my short pants. It crawled down along my inner thigh while passing its sleek and cool scales over my genitalia, and slipped down to the ridge out of the pants¡Ç bottom. Returning to the canal, the sinuous black body was slithering in the stream with a splash toward the paddies in the lower course.
How long did I stand stock still in that state? It was my grandmother that saved me. As I had had a delicate constitution since my infancy, I missed more than half of the term in kindergarten and rarely played with older or schoolmates after entering elementary school. I spent most of my time alone drawing pictures at my house, catching fishes and insects in the neighboring woods and paddies with my grandmother, or watching flowers and trees. On the day of the unusual encounter with the snake, I had made a promise with my grandmother to go catch fish together. However, I went to the paddies alone, for the first time, because I grew impatient with her as she had not come back home yet.
After stroking me, my grandmother scooped water from the canal with her hand and put the water between my eyebrows thrice with her index finger. When she moistened my lip with the tip of her forefinger wetted by the water left on her hand, I suddenly broke free from the paralysis and clung to her in tears. Patting my back, she told me in the Okinawa dialect that majimun, or an evil spirit, had done ill to me. The god of Mui (woods in the dialect), the god of Hah (spring in the dialect), chastened the majimun that harmed her beloved grandchild. She made the request aloud with her face turning around.
Since then, I had been fearful of the waterside and had stayed away from there for a fairly long time. It was about two years after the mystic event that the paddies and the canal were reclaimed and turned into sugar cane fields. The forests in the vicinity of my house were largely logged, and the spring dried up.
The old memory I recalled last summer. I was transferred to Miyako Island in Okinawa Prefecture because of my job. I went swimming alone in the sea around the Island and almost got washed away offshore. The tide was swifter than I had expected. With the thought that hasty action would make my life more threatened, I swam toward the shore and occasionally swam backstroke to preserve my strength, but was driven fast out to sea. Frightened with the notion that I was going to die off soon, I cried out for help, but never saw a figure on the beach. As I made strokes while feeling like crying, I saw a black snake swimming a little ways away. A memory of over twenty years old awoke in me immediately. The remembrance of its wriggling touch on my skin gave me goose bumps. But at the same time, it struck me that if I followed the snake moving toward the shore, I could¡Ä. And it might take nearly half an hour. The snake steadily approached the Island in a manner that it weaved its way along the line between ocean currents, and I was able to survive. I reached the coastal shallow water where I could stand. After walking awhile and collapsing on the shallows, I saw the snake going a shore and disappearing into the grove of beefwoods. I retraced the snake track on shining white sands and got to a beefwood tree. I had a little rest under the shade of the tree.
At that night, while sitting at the bar and drinking alone, I remembered that my grandmother had appealed to the gods to rebuke majimun. I guessed only now did the black snake, terrified me more than twenty years ago, come to atone for its wrongdoing, and smiled to myself. Meanwhile, it grieved me to think the woods, the spring and my grandmother were all gone from this transient world.
<1.30.2011>
<Translated by Naoki Arakaki/Translation Project X>
<写真はサルヴァドール・ダリの【三角形の時間】>
Shun Medoruma (born 1960) is, along with Eiki Matayoshi, 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).(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.) Central themes in Medoruma's literary works are the Japanese occupation and suppression of Okinawan culture and language, as well as the presence of American soldiers on the islands. He describes the structure of the violence forced on Okinawa/Okinawans from Japan and the US, and his stories somehow disclose their sadistic stance on Okinawa/Okinawans while he encourages Okinawans to be the agent of their own islands though he also digs into Okinawans' dark sides.
*****************************
Here is the second short novel【黒い蛇】（Black Snake) written by Medoruma Shun. It was translated by Mr. Naoki Arakaki, a talented professional translater born in Okinawa. This translation project X consists of three members; 【Naoki Arakaki, Fred Lovato, and Shoko Yonaha. Shoko is in charge of this project. Next story is 【花】（Flower). If you'd like to make any contact, send e-mail to: nasaki78@mail.goo.ne.jp
*This translation project X is acknowledged by Shun Medoruma.
『Black Snake】
One summer day, I went catching fish alone in the rice paddies near my house. I had just started elementary school in the spring of that year, and it was my first time to go getting fish by myself. Waterweeds were rocking in a canal carrying water from a spring, and the blades of summer grass, hanging down from a ridge between the rice fields, were also trembling in the canal. While putting my fingers in the stream, bubbles were rising from my fingers, flowing like quicksilver. In the canal, crucian carps and juvenile tilapias were shining like metal shavings, and Siamese fighting fish were waving their blue tails. I was absorbed in following these fish with the fishing net.
Suddenly, I became aware of something shadowy in sight. I straightened up and looked at the upper course of the canal. The clear water was running in the canal between the summer grass that looked like it was sprinkled in white sunlight. Along the surface of the water, a black snake with its head raised was swimming smoothly toward me. I got goose bumps all over and tried to run away hastily, but I was not able to yell out as if my voice had been sucked into a vacuum, and was frozen to the spot. When the black snake came to the place where I stood, the snake turned around to me. It put its head on the fishing net in the water, entwined itself around the bamboo handle of the net and went up the handle. Gleaming black and flicking out its tongue, the snake reached my wrist in a dash. After coiling around my arm and climbing up from my elbow to shoulder, it poked my face and jaw with its nose to look where to go. It found the neck of my T-shirt wide open and slid straight down from the middle of my chest to belly. Though it stopped at the waistband, it moved its head from side to side and burrowed into my short pants. It crawled down along my inner thigh while passing its sleek and cool scales over my genitalia, and slipped down to the ridge out of the pants¡Ç bottom. Returning to the canal, the sinuous black body was slithering in the stream with a splash toward the paddies in the lower course.
How long did I stand stock still in that state? It was my grandmother that saved me. As I had had a delicate constitution since my infancy, I missed more than half of the term in kindergarten and rarely played with older or schoolmates after entering elementary school. I spent most of my time alone drawing pictures at my house, catching fishes and insects in the neighboring woods and paddies with my grandmother, or watching flowers and trees. On the day of the unusual encounter with the snake, I had made a promise with my grandmother to go catch fish together. However, I went to the paddies alone, for the first time, because I grew impatient with her as she had not come back home yet.
After stroking me, my grandmother scooped water from the canal with her hand and put the water between my eyebrows thrice with her index finger. When she moistened my lip with the tip of her forefinger wetted by the water left on her hand, I suddenly broke free from the paralysis and clung to her in tears. Patting my back, she told me in the Okinawa dialect that majimun, or an evil spirit, had done ill to me. The god of Mui (woods in the dialect), the god of Hah (spring in the dialect), chastened the majimun that harmed her beloved grandchild. She made the request aloud with her face turning around.
Since then, I had been fearful of the waterside and had stayed away from there for a fairly long time. It was about two years after the mystic event that the paddies and the canal were reclaimed and turned into sugar cane fields. The forests in the vicinity of my house were largely logged, and the spring dried up.
The old memory I recalled last summer. I was transferred to Miyako Island in Okinawa Prefecture because of my job. I went swimming alone in the sea around the Island and almost got washed away offshore. The tide was swifter than I had expected. With the thought that hasty action would make my life more threatened, I swam toward the shore and occasionally swam backstroke to preserve my strength, but was driven fast out to sea. Frightened with the notion that I was going to die off soon, I cried out for help, but never saw a figure on the beach. As I made strokes while feeling like crying, I saw a black snake swimming a little ways away. A memory of over twenty years old awoke in me immediately. The remembrance of its wriggling touch on my skin gave me goose bumps. But at the same time, it struck me that if I followed the snake moving toward the shore, I could¡Ä. And it might take nearly half an hour. The snake steadily approached the Island in a manner that it weaved its way along the line between ocean currents, and I was able to survive. I reached the coastal shallow water where I could stand. After walking awhile and collapsing on the shallows, I saw the snake going a shore and disappearing into the grove of beefwoods. I retraced the snake track on shining white sands and got to a beefwood tree. I had a little rest under the shade of the tree.
At that night, while sitting at the bar and drinking alone, I remembered that my grandmother had appealed to the gods to rebuke majimun. I guessed only now did the black snake, terrified me more than twenty years ago, come to atone for its wrongdoing, and smiled to myself. Meanwhile, it grieved me to think the woods, the spring and my grandmother were all gone from this transient world.
<1.30.2011>
<Translated by Naoki Arakaki/Translation Project X>
<写真はサルヴァドール・ダリの【三角形の時間】>
