Ryukyuan Landscapes and Identity in the Omoro Sōshi (1531-1623) – Washin Kai Lecture

The Omoro Sōshi is an indigenous compilation of 1500 songs, poems, and prayers that extoll the golden age of the Ryukyu Islands. It offers insights absent from official histories that focus on great heroes. The collection sheds light on the Ryukyu’s semitropical flora and fauna, and by extension, the everyday life of the common people. This presentation will introduce the main features of the Omoro Sōshi and pay particular attention to key aspects of the landscape that shaped traditional communal formations. Its aim is to consider whether the compilation reflects a history of the region as top down (Yamato) or bottom up (Ryukyu).

About the Speaker: PROF. DAVINDER BHOWMIK, Associate Professor of Japanese, University of Washington

Davinder Bhowmik is Associate Professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian Languages & Literature at the University of Washington. She teaches on and researches modern Japanese literature, with a specialization in prose fiction from Okinawa, where she was born and lived until the age of 18. Other scholarly interests include regional fiction, the atomic bombings, and Japanese film. Her publications include Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (co-edited with Steve Rabson, 2016); Writing Okinawa: Narratives of Identity and Resistance (2008); and “Temporal Discontinuity in the Atomic Bomb Fiction of Hayashi Kyōko” (in Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan, 1999). She is currently writing a manuscript on military basetown fiction in Japan.

Washin Kai 和心会

Washin Kai 和心会, also known as Friends of Classical Japanese at UW, is a group of volunteers from the Puget Sound community with strong ties to the university and to Japan. Washin Kai was formed in the spring of 2018 in response to an appeal by the Department of Asian Languages & Literature to preserve and strengthen classical Japanese studies at UW. Our main mission is to create a permanent fund at UW, dedicated to supporting the study of classical Japanese language, literature and culture. Since 2018, we have organized a series of free, public events on classical Japanese literature to raise public awareness. The topics have ranged from lectures on medieval poets and poetry to performances of Rakugo and Noh drama, drawing hundreds of attendees. Please visit our Washin Kai Events page for more details on our past and future events.