Karakui

But first, a meme.

The image (a meme) reads:

• Annie: “I hate when non-Luchuans portray us in the media”
• Paddie: “Then you do support Luchan artists, don’t you?”
• Annie: […]
• Paddie: “Don’t you?”

When Twitter was the place all of us with similar interests would gather, we often saw the same complaints (very justified IMHO) whenever an anime, TV show, or movie about Okinawa (or filmed in Okinawa) was released. In reaction to this, a prominent Okinawan stage (Okinawa Shibai) actor commented that the people who say this often don’t support Luchuan artists. So I asked myself “why?” It’s true that the majority of anime, TV shows, and movies have mostly been directed by non-Okinawans and a few had no main actors from Okinawa *cough* “Ryukyu no Kaze” (NHK) *cough*. If the argument was that there wasn’t any talent to be found on Okinawa, then how do we show that they’re wrong?

Times are a-changing.

If the reason before was that there weren’t any good actors from Okinawa, we now have a lot of amazing actresses (with many an A-list male actor/musician from Japan marrying them) and there are a number of equally amazing male actors like Shogen and alumni from Okinawan Heroes like Ryujin Mabuyer (maybe difficult to grasp in the West, but many famous actors come from live action hero shows). In fact, there are so much great talent from Okinawa that we created our own TV series “Shō En” as well as web dramas like the aforementioned Okinawan Heroes and Okinawa Morning Drama that can be found on YouTube. Not leaving out anime fans, there are also quite a few famous voice actors from Okinawa like Nakamura Shugo and Shimabukuro Miyuri.

So why isn’t there more widespread support for these actors and shows?

Language. (At least for those of us outside of Okinawa and Japan and Japanese isn’t our first language). Many if not all of these shows that the actors appear on are not English-subtitled and are mostly in Japanese language. Every now and then a film will make it to a film festival so it’ll have English-subs and anime shows have a great chance of having English-subs or dubs too. But shows like “Shō En” and the other Okinawa-produced web dramas are currently available only in Japanese language. So this is the space we want to do our best to amplify.

Karakui: A Ryukyu Pop Culture Blog

We post a lot about new single or album releases from Okinawan musicians and on the occasion that a film or anime comes out, we post about those too. We sometimes post about events (we did this more often pre-pandemic) in Okinawa communities and also about food and beverages. While English-sub releases are few, we do our best to find and share these with our audience. So to get started, here are a few below that are free to watch on YouTube. If you’re able to Like or Comment on these, please do so to show your support. Also, share the link with friends so more people can enjoy them. We answer every comment or message from our Contact Us form, so feel free to say hello.

And this one is from the much beloved Campus Record (an actual brick-and-mortar store in Okinawa) who regularly release Okinawa music playlists from their deep collection of albums.