Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific By Nao ...

postcolonial. In this case, the postcolonial mode conforms to the general worldwide postmodern intellectual movement. (Ikezawa applies Gabriel Garcia Marquez's “magic realism” to the framework of the novel.) Since the 1980s, Western and (ex-)colonized non-Western worlds have substituted for “liberal humanist readings by critics of Commonwealth literature, the (newly re-christened) ‘postcolonial literatures’ [which] were at a stroke regarded as politically radical and locally situated, rather than universally relevant” (McLeod 25). In keeping with this movement, some contemporary Japanese writers challenge conventional modes of Pacific representations and critique the US military and cultural hegemonic presence along with Japan's colonial history and postwar economic/tourist (neo-colonialist) boom.

Set in an imaginary Micronesian state, Macias Gilly's downfall utilizes and reworks stereotypes. It depicts the postcolonial syncretism of metropolitan/traditional socio-cultural systems with the material, political, individual, urban, visible realm on one hand and the spiritual, religious, collective, rural, invisible realm on the other. The novel shows the latter's latent force through the downfall of the state's autocratic president, who represents the visible—but not the invisible—realm. In addition to this stereotyped depiction of Nanyo as a marvelous, mysterious, and formidable place, female characters in the text appear (true to form) as maidens, soul mates, and maidservants—both a comfort and menace to the male (though islander) protagonist. However, the text avoids depicting the syncretism of the two realms as idealistically reconciliatory or normally conflicting but rather as isolated from each other. Unlike most texts’ Pacific maidens or monsters, used as vehicles for the Japanese ideas of colonial/postcolonial Nanyo, Ikezawa's Pacific maiden is not so much a symbol as a medium of the latter abstract realm.