A Conversation - Yamanokuchi Baku

In the coffee shop where I used to hang out, one of the regular customers showed up one day after a long absence, his face deeply tanned. He announced in a loud voice to the woman who ran the shop and her daughter that he had been on a business trip to Okinawa. I’d been talking to some other people at the time, but, being from Okinawa, I was slightly irritated to hear him mention it. Most Okinawans of my generation feel uncomfortable at such times. Still, I could not suppress a certain interest in this man’s impressions of Okinawa. But hearing him talk about how he was invited to the home of a “chieftain”, how he drank awamori from a soup bowl, and how “the natives” do this and that, I felt as though he was conjuring up visions of a place I’d never seen. Although aware that this was simply a tourist’s amusement, I was saddened, not only because I am Okinawan, but also because the manager’s daughter was listening wide-eyed to this man’s every word. I had been planning to graduate from my lumpen lifestyle, and my relationship with this girl had progressed to the point where I was intending to ask her to marry me. I couldn’t help wondering what she would think if she knew I was Okinawan. Sitting in a booth of that coffee shop, I concentrated all my energy on writing this poem.

“Where are you from,” she asked.
I thought about where I was from and lit a cigarette.
That place colored by associations with tattoos, the jabisen
and ways as strange as ornamental designs.
“Very far away,” I answered.
“In what direction,” she asked.
That place of gloomy customs near the southern tip of the
Japanese
archipelago where women carry piglets on their heads and
people walk
barefoot. Was this where I was from?
“South,” I answered.
“Where in the south,” she asked.
In the south, that zone of indigo seas where it’s always
summer and dragon
orchids, sultan umbrellas, octopus pines, and papayas all
nestle together
under the bright sunlight. That place shrouded in miscon-
ceptions
where, it is said, the people aren’t Japanese and can’t under-
stand the Japanese language.
“The subtropics,” I answered.
“Oh, the subtropics!” she said.
Yes, my dear, can’t you see “the subtropics” right here before
your eyes?
Like me, the people there are Japanese, speak Japanese, and
were born
in the subtropics. But, viewed through popular stereotypes,
that place I am from
has become a synonym for chieftains, natives, karate and
awamori.
“Somewhere near the equator,” I said.

---------------------------

In the sub-tropics, winter is surprisingly short and easy to bear. The winds might bring a chill, but every now and then everything is bathed in warm sunshine and life suddenly seems a little better.

The end of winter in the sub-tropics is marked with the burst of vivid pink sakura across the island. This year, I feel particularly sympathetic for these blooms because it seems so difficult for people to love them in their own right. Didn’t Shakespeare say that a rose by any name would still smell as sweet? Didn’t Smap sing that each and every flower is equally unique?

When compared to their (seemingly superior) cousins from the sacred mainland, the sakura in Okinawa are simply too pink for their own good. Oh, and they don’t flutter in the early spring breeze like blushing rain like “those on the mainland do”.

I never knew that there were yardsticks for flowers, and that they had expectations to live up to.
For once and for all, a flower is a flower is a flower.

(I have even heard of foreign students who are unwilling to study in Okinawa because they fear that they won’t be taught standard Japanese. – sorry, this is really a story for next time)

If the place isn’t “Japanese” enough for you, perhaps you would like to move on to Kyoto instead?

Okinawa has probably come a long way from being snubbed as a cultural backwater, but some things don’t ever really change. Today the island ekes out a living from selling images of blue seas, azure skies, white sandy beaches and S.L.O.W. life.

Apparently the people here eat luncheon meat with everything and everyone knows how to play the sanshin and do the kacha-shi. The women are sprightly and the men lazy. No one is ever on time and hey, strangers are practically like brothers to the Okinawans because ichariba-cho-de-!!

Which begs the question. Are we supposed to love Okinawa because it’s so “different”, or are we supposed to dismiss the place because it seems nothing like Japan?

Sometimes when I hear the locals sing the praises of their own island, I wonder if they actually mean what they say. Surely there’s more to Okinawa than shi-sa and goya champuru right? But then again, no one mentions the unemployment rate (double the national average), the GDP (lowest in Japan), the divorce rates (highest in the country) or the terrible noise generated by U.S. fighter jets flying low over local residences.

What will it take for Okinawa to be seen in the flesh? The longer we live with the stereotypes and images, the harder it will be for Okinawa to be appreciated and understood the way it should be.