“Reading” in the Classroom Again: Reading Umi-no-inochi with a Fisherman

Abstract

On my visit to a school on a little island in Okinawa, I happened to meet a fisherman Mr. T through his grandson. He invited the teacher and me to his home on the shore where we had the opportunity to read Umi-no-inochi by Wahei Tatematsu. Listening to the story we read aloud, the fisherman remembered and talked about his own experiences on the sea. Finally he said, “The man who wrote this knows little about our life.” In Okinawa fishermen's culture or “life on the sea” has been orally transmitted by the prayer “Ugan-baarei.” Written words are unfamiliar and unreliable to them. How can we teachers grasp this gap between oral and written cultures? Historically overviewing oral literature in literary education, here I will answer this question from the perspective of the “third term.”