| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Research Abstract |
This research project started with the preparation of a monograph that was based on a social anthropological study of Yomitan Village, Okinawa Prefecture. This study sought to determine actual conditions surrounding the recording of wartime experiences and the village as it was damaged during the war, and to ascertain reconstruction of the village after the war. Furthermore, the project examined the recording of accounts by Yomitan residents of their wartime memories and the oral communication of these memories (for example, recording of wartime experiences in the island dialect, folksongs, stories told at the nuclear/extended family level, etc.). The project then translated the records of war-related statements orally passed down by current Yomitan residents into basic data.
The project also involved a study of Okinawans who had emigrated to Hawaii. This study was conducted in the form of an interview survey of war-related memories and awareness of these memories, using a club made up
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of people from Okinawa who currently reside in Oahu as a source of information. The study also collected war-related documents of ethnic Okinawan emigrants that remain in Hawaii. Through comparative research of attitudes pertaining to the war memories of these Okinawa residents and Hawaii emigrants, an acceptance-process analysis was conducted to determine how the wartime experiences of individuals were viewed in the social and cultural environments in which these individuals later lived, and how they were being passed on to later generations.
Even in the past, analyses of how war accounts are being recorded were made from the standpoint of historical records and political history. However, it is expected that the passing on of wartime experiences and memories as told by individuals is largely influenced by the social and cultural environment in which these individuals live. The significance of this research project lies in the preparation of a monograph of Yomitan Village, Okinawa Prefecture, that focuses on individual wartime experiences and restructuring of the village during its postwar recovery, and in comparison of the wartime experiences and perspectives of emigrants in Hawaii that are part of the Okinawan identity, which is known as Uchinanchu. The research project goes beyond simple recording of wartime experiences; it also takes a comparative look at individuals' attitudes toward wartime memories and later social and cultural environments. Even from an interdisciplinary perspective, there are no methodologies established for this field. Less
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