A team of linguists and local residents will publish children's picture books in languages used by residents of remote islands of Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures, aiming to preserve their unique cultures from extinction and pass them down to future generations.
The team has decided to use folk stories and ballads from four islands to use as the basis for a book for each island. These books will be written in the local language, as well as standard Japanese and English, and will be published this fall.
The project leader is Masahiro Yamada, an associate professor of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo. Yamada has studied the languages of Okinoerabu Island of Kagoshima Prefecture and Yonaguni Island of Okinawa Prefecture. These languages are some of the Ryukyu languages used in the region extending from Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture to Yaeyama Islands of Okinawa Prefecture.
Yamada has visited the two islands more than 50 times since 2010 to record and transcribe the languages spoken by local elderly people to create a dictionary, among other reasons.
Since the region started to be governed by the Meiji government in the late 19th century, the use of standard Japanese began spreading across the islands. Today, residents in their 60s or older use the local island languages in their daily lives, however, their children only understand but cannot speak it smoothly and their grandchildren cannot even understand it.
Yamada is concerned that these languages, which are deeply associated with the local cultures and customs, may go extinct and has shared his concern with other linguists who study the Ryukyu languages on other islands. Yamada and the other linguists started the project in 2016 with the belief that picture books "can easily draw the attention of children, and also give parents an opportunity to spend time with their children."
The team chose four islands for the project, which are Okinoerabu Island and Yonaguni Island, which are the islands that Yamada focused on, and also Tarama and Taketomi islands of Okinawa Prefecture.
The team has received support from local residents, including Mihoko Tanaka, 61, a kindergarten teacher in Wadomari on Okinoerabu Island who has made kamishibai picture-card shows featuring folk stories from the island with Yamada and other people and has taught local dialect classes. For this project, Yamada helped with researching content.
More and more people wanted this project to succeed.
An online crowdfunding campaign, which ended in January, raised 4.18 million yen, far exceeding the goal of 2.4 million yen, and a lot of the money was from donors outside the islands.
The stories in the books will be written in the local languages, along with standard Japanese and English translations. A word-for-word translation with detailed explanations will be included in the back of the book.
The book about Yonaguni Island, titled "Dirabudi," tells the story of three brothers who go fishing to try and catch enough fish to feed their entire family. Dirabudi is the name of one of the brothers.
"Fushinu Innonu Hanashi" tells the origin of how the star sand was formed on the beach of Taketomi Island.
The illustrations for all four books are drawn by Fumi Yamamoto, an illustrator who researches the Ryukyu languages. Each book is A-4 size, is about 30 pages long, and 1,000 copies will be published.
The team is also planning to create a website that will provide videos with audio recordings of the books read by islanders and moving illustrations. The team is considering publishing similar books based on other islands as well.
"Island folk stories are very emotional and full of wisdom from ancestors," Tanaka said. "They are also important for local children to build their identities."
"This project will help preserve the cultures of [these] islands, and I hope people will enjoy reading these books at home and in their local communities," Yamada said.
The Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger released by UNESCO in 2009 shows that about 2,500 languages across the world have a threat of going extinct, including eight languages of Japan. The eight includes the Ainu language in Hokkaido and six Ryukyu languages. These six languages branched off more than 1,000 years ago from the language spoken on mainland Japan, and each has its own individual history. It is said that the languages can differ from island to island and can even vary from region to region on the same island.
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