2025 Washin Kai Spring Lecture:
Professor Davinder Bhowmik, UW Dept. of
Asian Languages and Literature
By Barbara Mizoguchi
NAP Editor
This year’s Washin Kai’s spring lecture will be by Professor Davinder Bhowmik from the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington (UW). On April 8, Bhowmik will be speaking about Ryukyuan Landscapes and Identity in the Omoro Sōshi (1531-1623) at Kane Hall on the UW Seattle campus.
Ryukyuans are indigenous people from the Ryūkyū Islands which consist of 200 islands stretching from Kyushu, Japan to Taiwan in the Ryūkyū Archipelago (off southern Japan). However, most people live in Okinawa or Kagoshima prefectures. Historically, Ryukyuans lived in isolation. Today there are limited tourists to preserve Ryuku’s beautiful land and unique culture.
Bhowmik will be discussing ancient poems, songs, and prayers of Okinawa called omoro. There are over 1,500 songs in the Omoro Sōshi, which was compiled between 1521 and 1623. These songs, some dating from the 12th century, are written mostly in hiragana (phonetic writing) together with some simple kanji (Chinese characters). The songs describe the semi tropical landscape, flora, fauna, and daily life of the people. The early influence of people from China, Southeast Asia, Japan, and the South Seas helped Ryukyuans develop their own unique song, dance, and literature. Bhowmik says, “I am interested in what makes the songs in the Omoro distinctive. Is it landscape? In my reading of modern prose, Okinawa’s flora and fauna play a significant role.” Today there are few scholars who have researched Ryukyuan traditions due to the difficulty in comprehending indigenous languages, society, and culture.
However, this does not make Bhowmik hesitant about diving into the subject. Her parents moved from India to Okinawa where Bhowmik was born and raised. After high school, she travelled to the U.S. for the first time and attended the UW where she could be near relatives. While majoring in English and Japanese, Bhowmik took a course in Japanese literature that made her decide to earn a master’s degree then a Ph.D. in the field at UW. She then taught Japanese literature at the University of California-Berkeley where she solidified her interest in the Japanese literature. Bhowmik also lived in Tokyo, taking a 10-month advanced Japanese language program at the Inter-University Center (IUC) administered by Stanford University in the U.S. She now serves on the IUC’s executive board.
Bhowmik is currently working on a manuscript about military basetown fiction in Japan. She is “writing about the impact of the military presence as demonstrated in fiction.” Although Okinawa is less than one percent of Japan’s land mass, it “hosts 70 percent of U.S. military installations in all of Japan.” As a result, there have been decades of gendered violence, vehicular and air craft accidents, pollution, and environmental destruction.
Learn more about Bhowmik during the lecture and reception:
Tuesday, April 8, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
University of Washington, Seattle Campus Kane Hall 210
Admission is free and open to the public (Registration is required)
Event information and registration: https://bit.ly/WKlecture2025
Reception to follow in the Kane Hall Walker Ames Room.
is the Associate Professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian Languages & Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. She teaches and researches modern Japanese literature with a specialization in prose fiction from Okinawa, Japan where she was born and lived until age 18. Other scholarly interests include regional fiction, atomic bombings, and Japanese film. Her publications include Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (co-edited with Steve Rabson, 2016); Writing Okinawa: Narratives of Identity and Resistance (2008); and “Temporal Discontinuity in the Atomic Bomb Fiction of Hayashi Kyōko” (in Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan, 1999). She is currently writing a manuscript on military basetown fiction in Japan. Washin Kai 和心会, also known as Friends of Classical Japanese at UW, is a group of volunteers from the Puget Sound area with strong ties to the University of Washington and Japan. Washin Kai was formed in the spring of 2018 to support graduate students in their study of Japanese language, literature and culture at UW. Our mission includes fostering deeper appreciation and understanding of Japanese literature and culture within our community.
