Shun Medoruma

Shun Medoruma (born October 6, 1960, in Nakijin, Okinawa, Japan) is a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and activist renowned for his works exploring the psychological after-effects of the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese occupation, and U.S. military presence. He gained prominence with early awards like the 1983 Ryukyu Shimpō Short Story Prize and the 1997 Akutagawa Prize for "Droplets" (Suiteki), followed by the Kawabata Yasunari and Kiyama Shōhei prizes for "Mabuigumi" (1998), and his screenplay for Fūon: The Crying Wind won the 2004 Montreal Film Festival Innovation Prize. His novel In the Woods of Memory (2009) was the first full-length Okinawan novel translated into English. Japanese JLPP