Hope

Extract

On June 26, 1999, the Asahi, a major Japanese newspaper, published a very short story by Okinawa's most critically acclaimed writer of recent years, Medoruma Shun. The brevity of this piece belies its impact on readers. Unsettling in both form and content, the story depicts the constraints of everyday life in Okinawa, a small island on which nearly 75 percent of Japan's United States military bases sit on less than one percent of Japanese soil. It is here where, owing to the terms of the United States-Japan Security Treaty, Okinawans have since the end of the Pacific War lived with violent crimes and deadly accidents endemic to the vast U.S. military presence. In this story, the infamous 1995 rape by three U.S. military servicemen of a 12-year old Okinawan schoolgirl serves as a backdrop. It is a fictional expression of the powerlessness many Okinawans feel, long oppressed by the governments of Japan and the United States, and of the extreme action one individual takes in response to this lack of power.