RESUREECTING THE CULTURE OF PREMODERN KUMEJIMA

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1) Our group has deciphered the massive collection of manuscript-documents that were until recently kept in four private archives in Kumejima, the Okinawan isle laying between the main island of Okinawa and Fuchien in southern China. The objective of this laborious and unavoidably interdisciplinary study was to resurrect the hitherto forgotten culture of pre-modern Kumejima. The results were: a) the discovery of a highly perceptive as well as innovative culture that kept a certain flexible detachment towards the high and low cultures of China, Japan, and even the main Okinawa island; b) the discovery of the important role in the growth of this island culture played by the families of local magistrates such as the Uezus; their growing interest in the ritual propriety of their daily lives was the source of the integration of diverse cultural influences from the outside world; c) the discovery, as a background to the growth of such an island cultural entity, of the profound richness of 19th-century Kumejima attained by the islanders' prolonged efforts for irrigation and the expansion of unregistered arable lands.2) We have prepared a catalogue of the approximately 2000 documents(including books printed in China, Japan, and Okinawa) in these four private archives, and it is about to be printed. Its title is Uezu-Ke, Yosenaga-Ke, Yoshihama-Ke, and Miyagi-Ke Monjyo Mokuroku (eds. Toshio Yokoyama, et al. , Kyoto University, 2002).3)0ur research newsletter, Tunbara Tsushin, has been issued eleven times during the past three years and it (totaling 153 pages) has been distributed among 50 scholars in the relevant fields of area studies as well as ecological studies.