When the Fujin Koron, the most popular women's monthly magazine at that time, published the first work of KUSHI, Fusako (1903-1986), Memoirs of a Declining Ryukyuan Woman (June in 1932), the Society of people from Okinawa prefecture and Okinawan student association in Tokyo impeached for the depiction of Okinawans in the story, and prevented its serialization. In the following month's issue of the Fujin Koron, appeared an account that turned out to be her eloquent defense of her own story ("In the Defense of Memoirs of A Declining Ryukyuan Woman"). In the ‘Defense,' she presented a preeminent view concerning gender and ethnicity which is far ahead of the times, and she has been regarded as one of the most respectful women in the Okinawan modern history.
In this presentation, I'd like to trace her reemergence as a "house wife who devotes herself to a religion" after a long silence, which is so called as to be "her inconsistency," in another word, "Enigma," and consider how it was formed her assimilation and the idea of ethnicity/gender, which defiantly rejected Japanese modern enlightenment prevalent in those days.
