Mänoa Readers / Theatre Ensemble ProductionFollowed by a Conversation with the Playwright

Presented by Hawaii United Okinawa Association and UH-Mänoa Centerfor Okinawan Studies in Collaboration with UH-Mänoa Outreach College

October 26, 2011, Hawaii Okinawa Center

�� �������� � ����a play by Öshiro Tatsuhiro

Fay Ann Chun has a Master of Fine Arts degree in dancefrom the University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa and a Bachelorof Arts degree from Scripps College in Claremont, CA.She has studied and performed with Dances We Dance,Bluewater Dance Company, and Tangentz PerformanceGroup. She is very excited to be a part of the Mänoa Read-ers/Theatre Ensemble.

Dann Seki is a stage and screen actor and storyteller. Amember of the Screen Actors Guild and the AmericanFederation of Television and Radio Artists, he has ap-peared in numerous plays in most of the theatres in Hon-olulu. His TV and film credits include many productionsfilmed in Hawai‘i including Hawaii Five-0, LycheeThieves, The Informant, Max’s Special Delivery, Lost,Hawaii, North Shore, Baywatch Hawaii, Magnum, P.I.,Crowfoot, And the Sea Will Tell, Savage Beach, and nu-merous local commercials. A storyteller since 1994, he hasperformed at various venues on Oahu and the NeighborIslands.

Ben Moffat is a free-lance performer, storyteller, andwriter based in Hawai‘i and Wisconsin. A foundingmember of the dance-theater troupe Monkey Waterfall,he is often seen on stilts and/or wearing a mask. He taughttheater at Windward Community College for over twentyyears.

Nyla Fujii-Babb has been a storyteller, actress, voice-overtalent, and producer for over forty years in Hawai‘i. Sheis the only storyteller from Hawai‘i invited twice to beboth an “exchange teller” and a featured performer at theprestigious National Storytelling Festival in Jonesbor-ough, Tennessee. She has also been a featured performerat Storytelling Festivals across the United States. Nyla has

appeared as an actress for the Kumu Kahua TheatreCompany, the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, the Japan-America Theatre, and the Emerson Majestic Theatre. Shewas the voice-over narrator for the KHET/Tom Coffmanproduction of “Nation Within: The Overthrow of theHawaiian Kingdom,” the Biography Hawai‘i Series: “KojiAriyoshi,” and Tom Coffman’s “The First Battle: The Bat-tle for Equality in War Time Hawaii.” Most recently shehas been in the 2010 Mänoa Readers/Theatre Ensemble’sproductions of Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug, trans-lated by Alok Bhalla, and “Musings of Mystery and Al-phabets of Agony: The Work of Edward Gorey.”

James Phelps, following in the footsteps of his musicianand educator father, has been a percussionist and educa-tor for over fifteen years. His music has allowed him totravel extensively throughout North America andCanada. Currently a music specialist at Waiau Elemen-tary in Pearl City, he enjoys sharing his musical talentswith kids and loves spending time with his family andtwo-year-old son.

Doug Kaya teaches Communication at Leeward Com-munity College. He is also a senior mediator with the Me-diation Center of the Pacific.

Dennis Nishihara retired from the Department of Edu-cation after serving as a counselor on Maui, Moloka‘i, theBig Island, and O‘ahu for over thirty years. He was namedCounselor of the Year by the Hawai‘i School CounselorAssociation in 1979. He received the Ola Pono Award forservices to the community from HMSA in 2005. He alsoreceived the Hawai‘i Counselor Association’s Counselorof the Year Award that year.

2 The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide

Cast of CharactersDirected by Tim Slaughter

Mr. Uehara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dann SekiYöko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fay Ann ChunMr. Yang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Doug KayaMr. Ogawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dennis NishiharaMr. Miller / Ben Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ben MoffatHelen Miller / Police Officer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nyla Fujii-BabbMr. Morgan / Robert Harris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Phelps

�� �������� � ��ty

The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide 3

T he Cocktail Party opens in a home in Washington,D.C., in 1995. Mr. Uehara has recently arrived

from Okinawa to visit his daughter, Yöko, whom hehasn’t seen in over twenty years. She came to the U.S.to attend college, then met and married an American.Father and daughter reminisce as they wait for BenMiller, her husband, to return from his law office. Shortly after Ben arrives, the conversation is inter-rupted by a commotion outside. American veterans’

groups are protesting plans by the Smithsonian Insti-tution to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end ofWWII. A planned exhibit would question the justifi-cation for dropping the atomic bombs, and note thesuffering of Japanese civilians. The veterans want theexhibit to emphasize America’s patriotic sacrifices dur-ing a war started by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Mr. Uehara is troubled that Ben is giving legal coun-sel to the veterans’ groups. Ben counters that he is simplyproviding legal advice, and is not personally taking sidesin the controversy. Mr. Uehara refuses to accept suchneutrality, and alludes to a clash between himself andBen’s father in 1971. The second and third acts are flashbacks to 1971, inOkinawa. After more than two decades of U.S. militaryoccupation, relations between Americans and Oki-nawans have become tense; in response, Okinawa willrevert to Japanese sovereignty the following year. Act two opens in the Millers’ home, where they arehosting a cocktail party. Guests include Mr. Uehara,Mr. Ogawa (a Japanese reporter), and Mr. Yang (aChinese lawyer). The men meet regularly to practiceconversational Chinese. On this occasion, they arejoined by a neighbor, Mr. Morgan. Mr. Uehara arriveslate, upset that his wife has allowed Yöko to go out witha young G.I., Robert Harris. The party is interruptedby news that Mr. Morgan’s young son is missing. In the next scene, Yöko and Harris are watching thesunset from the cliffs at Maeda Point. He makes un-

welcome advances, then assaults her. In their struggle,she pushes him over the cliff. He is in danger of falling,until Yöko rescues him. The search for Morgan’s son continues. Speakingto Uehara, Yang recalls an incident during the war inwhich his own small son went missing. Returning tothe Millers’ house, they learn that Morgan’s son hasbeen found. In act three, Uehara has learned that Yöko was at-tacked, and that Harris has filed criminal chargesagainst her for injuring him. Uehara now realizes theinequality in the judicial system: American servicemenare not subject to the jurisdiction of Okinawan courts.Uehara appeals to Miller for help, but Miller refuses,fearing the incident could escalate. When Uehara turns next to Yang for help, Yangpoints out the irony of a former soldier in the Japanesearmy in China now asking for help from a Chinese cit-izen. When the Japanese army occupied China from1931 to 1945, as many as 35 million Chinese were killed.Yang nevertheless agrees to help. Aware of his legal

privileges as an American G.I., Harris responds withcontempt. Uehara insists that Yöko testify against Har-ris, despite the pain her testimony will cause her. In act four, the setting is again Washington, D.C.,in 1995. Uehara finishes telling Ben what happened in1971. Yöko remarks that she came to America to dis-cover the meaning of justice. Now, she has mixed feel-ings. She, too, is uneasy about Ben’s attempt to remainneutral, and his belief that following the letter of thelaw will achieve true justice; the conflict between theSmithsonian and the veterans has moral as well as legalcomplexities. The disagreement threatens to be a rep-etition of the break in the friendship between Ben’s fa-ther and Uehara in 1971. The characters wonder if individuals and nationscan ever overcome historical grievances without firstacknowledging their own transgressions. The playconcludes with hope that reconciliation is possible, butonly when adversaries are able to speak to each otherwith mutual respect, honesty, and goodwill.

A�out t�e Play

4 The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide

Many people regard Öshiro Tatsuhiro as a founderof modern Okinawan literature. In a prolific

writing career spanning six decades, Öshiro has creatednew ways for Okinawans to see themselves through lit-erature. In 2002, his Complete Works (Öshiro Tatsuhirozenshu) was published in thirteen volumes, comprisingfiction, drama, essays, and writings on Okinawan cul-ture and history. Öshiro continues to add to this impres-sive body of work.

Born in 1925 in Nakagusuku village on the island ofOkinawa, Öshiro was educated through middle schoolin Naha. In 1943, he enrolled in a private university inShanghai, China, the Töa Döbun Shoin Daigaku, estab-lished at the end of the nineteenth century. The missionof the university was to foster good relations among stu-dents from Japan, China, and the rest of Asia by encour-aging mastery of other languages and respect forcultural differences.

After the Japanese were defeated in the war, Öshiroreturned to Okinawa, where he found work on U.S. mil-itary bases —at that time one of the few employers onthe devastated islands. He later taught high school andworked in the Trade Office of the Government of theRyukyu Islands. He also served as director of the Oki-nawa Institute of Historical Collections, retiring in 1986.

Known foremost as a fiction writer and playwright,Öshiro was the first Okinawan to win Japan’s most pres-tigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. In 1967, hewas awarded the prize for a novella titled The CocktailParty. Two decades later, he updated the events in thenovel and adapted it into the play being presentedtonight. Öshiro’s first published work was an award-win-ning play, Bright Cloud (Meiun), about postwar Oki-nawa, and he has continued to produce theatrical worksusing experimental and traditional forms and themes.Öshiro’s newest play premiered in Okinawa in 2011. Hismost recent collection of fiction is also scheduled forpublication in 2011.

I t is a great honor for me to have my play The CocktailParty produced in Hawai‘i. I would like to briefly ex-

plain my motivation for writing it and to give audiencesa better understanding of its background and meaning. After Japan was defeated, it was determined by theSan Francisco Treaty of 1951 that semi-permanentAmerican bases would be constructed in Okinawa andthe former prefecture would be governed by a U.S. mil-itary administration. The landscape created by mixing American militaryauthorities, servicemen, their family members, and theOkinawan people was always very complicated. Whenthe situation was peaceful, there were many instances ofinternational goodwill. But when criminal cases arose,the peace was disrupted, primarily because Americanshad immunity from prosecution by the Okinawan legalsystem. In contrast, crimes by Okinawans against Amer-icans were punished severely in military courts. Every-one witnessed this inequality time after time. In the 1960s, I knew very well that it would be easyenough to protest the victimization of Okinawans bywriting an angry political essay. However, I chose a dif-ferent approach. I intended to write a work of fictionabout this unjust system, using as the setting a cocktail

party where people of various nationalities were toastinginternational friendship. Thinking it over, I rememberedthat Okinawans, as Japanese citizens, had once been vic-timizers, when Japan occupied China during WWII. Idecided to write a novella that would question head-onthe shifting identities of victims and victimizers. My novella was honored with the 1967 AkutagawaPrize. But despite the praise the book received, I felt few

W�y � Wrote t�e Play

Courtesy of RYUKYU SHIMPO

A�out t�e Playwri��t

The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide 5

readers truly understood what I was trying to express. Twenty years later, I read in one of Japan’s nationalnewspapers an essay by a prominent Japanese socialcritic. He wrote, “We continue to think of ourselves asvictims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I think weshould now realize that we were victimizers as well.” I was at an utter loss for words. Was this critic un-aware that I had expressed the same conviction twentyyears earlier? Then it occurred to me that if I rewrote The CocktailParty as a play, and produced it for an American audi-ence, my meaning would be clearer and more widelycirculated. However, I never finished the play, becauseI felt that the chances of getting such a work producedwould be very slim. Almost ten years passed. Then, in 1995, an incidenttook place at the Smithsonian Museum that caused meto remember why my unwritten play had seemed so im-portant. The museum planned an exhibition to markthe end of WWII, and wanted to use the Enola Gay (theb-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima) aspart of the display. American veterans’ groups, however,vehemently criticized the exhibition, and because of theheated controversy, the exhibition, as it was originallyenvisioned, was eventually cancelled. The veterans re-portedly referred to the bitter feelings that remainedconcerning the Pearl Harbor attack, and based their op-position partly on their belief that the exhibition shouldemphasize more forcefully the message that Americanshad been the victims in the war. In writing my 1967 novella, I had paid attention tothese sensitivities and had tried to consider how to com-pare the issue of Pearl Harbor with that of Hiroshima.

The novella was translated into English and publishedin the United States in 1989, but I am afraid it was notread nor understood any better there than in Japan. Reading in the Japanese newspapers about theSmithsonian incident, I once again felt compelled towrite a theatrical version of The Cocktail Party. Thistime, I decided to write without worrying about whetherit would ever be produced anywhere. The novella takesplace in the early 1960s, but I set the play primarily in1971. To be able to discuss the Smithsonian incident, Ihad the daughter of the Okinawan protagonist go to theUnited States and marry an American, so I was able tocreate new scenes that are set in the U.S. in 1995. After completing the play, I showed it to my friendDr. Katsunori Yamazato. He translated it into English,assuring me that at some time in the future an opportu-nity to produce it would arise. Recently, Professor Yamazato and Professor FrankStewart, of the University of Hawai‘i, compiled an an-thology of Okinawan literature in English, Living Spirit:Literature and Resurgence in Okinawa, and decided toinclude the play. Professor Stewart then proposed thatthe play be staged in Honolulu. I feel honored to haveThe Cocktail Party performed in Hawai‘i, but I am alsonervous. My anxiety comes from my earnest desire thatthe play will adequately express my belief in an ideal of“universal and absolute ethics,” and that an enduringpeace is possible if we can transcend the tendency to seeourselves and others solely as either victims or victim-izers. I hope that the American audience will think aboutThe Cocktail Party with an open mind.

Öshiro Tatsuhiro trans. by Katsunori Yamazato

Öshiro Tatsuhiro’s The Cocktail Party is but one ex-ample of the resurgence of Okinawan literature and

culture today, and can be best appreciated by knowingsomething of Okinawa’s history. From the twelfth to theseventeenth century, the independent, centralizedRyükyü Kingdom flourished. In 1609, the Satsuma (Shi-mazu) clan of southern Kyüshü invaded the kingdom andtook control. According to the “father of Okinawan stud-ies,” Iha Fuyü, the invasion transformed the kingdom into“an ingenious organ” of exploitation, and for the next 270years Satsuma plundered the resources of the Ryükyüs,using the kingdom for organized smuggling while otherparts of Japan were closed to foreign countries. The clan

imposed a heavy tribute-tax on the people, and under thesevere and uncompromising control of Satsuma, Oki-nawans became—to use Iha’s word—“slaves.” During the Satsuma era, Okinawan culture lost its vigorand liveliness, and the arts declined. The invasion anddomination by Satsuma, Iha wrote, were the greatesttragedies in Okinawan history, and he believed that evenin the twentieth century the people were still suffering fromthe trauma of three centuries of Satsuma “enslavement.” Although another act of colonization, the 1879 annexa-tion of the Ryükyüs by Japan ended the islands’ economicruin, and the new prefecture was integrated into the rest ofthe nation; Iha called annexation an “emancipation” from

��e �ocktai� �arty in t�e Context o� Okinawan Literature

Okinawa was the site of the last major battle of WWII.The battle lasted for three months, beginning in

April 1945. Buildings on the island that had survived theAmerican fire bombing of the capital city, Naha, the pre-vious October were almost all destroyed during the fight-ing. The loss of civilian life in the three-month battle wason the scale of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima andNagasaki—combined. Following the war, Okinawa was separated from therest of Japan and governed directly by the United States.It was not until 1972, in response to ever-larger but alwayspeaceful demonstrations by the Okinawan public, thatthe U.S. reluctantly allowed the island chain to revert toJapan. The massive U.S. military presence, however, con-tinues to this day. Typical of this presence is the U.S. Ma-rine Air Station in Futenma, splitting the large city ofGinowan in two and sending forth, at all hours of the day,low-flying training missions that for decades now havefrightened and annoyed local residents. Öshiro’s 1965 novelistic version of The Cocktail Partyends with the decision by the protagonist to press chargesagainst his daughter’s American serviceman rapist, andto insist that the truth be told in court no matter how un-just the legal system imposed on the Okinawans by the

U.S military or how hopeless the chance of getting a fairtrial. With his decision the protagonist also exposes thehollowness of efforts to promote international good-will—symbolized by the party of the story’s title—whennot based on a true accounting of the circumstanceswithin which peoples interact across national lines. Thestory resonated powerfully with Okinawan and mainlandJapanese readers alike and established Öshiro as a leadinginterpreter of the Okinawan postwar experience. In the play adaptation of The Cocktail Party, when themain Okinawan characters in the novella come togetherin 1995, their circumstances have become international-ized in ways unimaginable before. But the same problemspersist and call for a new kind of response. The playshows us that a response is needed as much by Americansas by Okinawans. The attitude and understanding em-bodied in the play’s conclusion is precisely what Confu-cius proclaimed as the thread running through andsupporting all his moral teachings. It is there in the West-ern tradition as well, had we but the strength and will tosee past our imagined innocence to a clear-sightedknowledge of ourselves and others.

David Fahy, University of California at Davis

6 The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide

a bitter period of “slavery.” Iha was of course aware of theparallel he was drawing with the history of slavery in Amer-ica. He was equally aware that annexation by Japan furthersuppressed Okinawan culture and language. Iha made these observations in his 1947 essay, “A Storyof Okinawan History.” Okinawa was occupied at the timeby the American military, as it had been since 1945. Ihaconcluded his essay:

When imperialism comes to an end on this earth, Ok-inawans will then be liberated from the “bitter world”[nigayo] and enjoy the “sweet world” [amayo].

Nigayo and amayo are from the vocabulary of ancientRyükyüan sacred poetry. They mean, respectively, “a yearof bad harvest” and “a year of abundance.” Nigayo, in Iha’smodern interpretation, seems to refer to the many afflic-tions that Okinawans endured—not only the Satsuma in-vasion and Japanese annexation, but also the fierce Battleof Okinawa, which took place in 1945. The battle is re -garded as one of the cruelest conflicts ever fought: aftereighty-two days of horrendous fighting, nearly one hun-

dred thousand civilians had perished, the great majority ofthem trapped between the armies of Japan and the UnitedStates. The battle had a traumatic and lasting effect on theOkinawan imagination—and we see this reflected in theliterature. By the word imperialism in his essay, Iha was referringto all political and social systems that violate humanrights and that use political and military might to enforcepolicies of discrimination, oppression, or aggression.Seiyei Wakukawa—an influential leader of the Okinawandiaspora in Hawai‘i, and a disciple of Iha’s in the 1920s—wrote that “Okinawa is unblessed with history.” Iha hadmeditated on this “unblessed history” in his last essay,and how it has shaped Okinawan identity. Iha believed there are two struggles in the Okinawanpsyche: the desire to be free of “imperialism,” and theyearning to reach the ideal state he called amayo. Today,sixty-six years after the Battle of Okinawa, Okinawans con-tinue to be caught between Japan and the United States.

Katsunori Yamazato, University of the Ryukyus

��e �ocktai� �arty an� Reconcilation

The Cocktail Party • MRTE Guide 7

Okinawan HistoryThe Battle of Okinawa

Feifer, George. Tennozan: The Battle of Oki-nawa and the Atomic Bomb. NY: Ticknor andFields, 1992. (The battle, and justification forusing the atomic bomb.)

Gordin, Michael D. Five Days in August: HowWorld War II Became a Nuclear War. PrincetonUP, 2007.

Hiromichi Yahara. The Battle For Okinawa.NY: Wiley, 1997. (A Japanese soldier’s perspec-tive.)

Higa Tomiko. The Girl with the White Flag.Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003. (A young-adult novel,from a six-year-old girl’s perspective.)

Sledge, E. B. With the Old Breed: At Peleliuand Okinawa. Novato, CA: Presidio Press,2007. (An American soldier’s perspective.)

Yoshimura Akira. Typhoon of Steel: An Oki-nawan Schoolboy’s Quest for Martyrdom Dur-ing the Battle of Okinawa. St. Johann Press,2009. (A boy-soldier’s perspective.)

American Occupation 1951–1972

Johnson, Chalmers, ed. Okinawa: Cold War Is-land. Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999.

Keyso, Ruth Ann. Women of Okinawa: NineVoices from a Garrison Island. Cornell UP,2000.

Molasky, Michael S. The American Occupationof Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Mem-ory. NY: Routledge, 2001.

Miyume Tanji. Myth, Protest and Struggle inOkinawa. NY: Routledge, 2006.

Masamichi S. Inoue. Okinawa and the U.S. Mil-itary: Identity Making in the Age of Globaliza-tion. NY: Columbia UP, 2007.

Sarantakes, Nicholas Evan. Keystone: TheAmerican Occupation of Okinawa and U.S. –Japanese Relations. Texas A&M UP, 2000.

Diaspora and Okinawans in Hawai‘i

Chinen, Joyce, ed. Uchinaanchu Diaspora:Memories, continuities, and Constructions. So-cial Process in Hawai‘i, Volume 42. Dist. byUniversity of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.

Nakasone, Ronald Y. ed. Okinawan Diaspora.Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002.

Uchinanchu: A History of Okinawans in Hawaii.Revised Edition. Ethnic Studies Oral HistoryProject, United Okinawan Association ofHawaii. Dist. by University of Hawai‘i Press,2010.

Literature

Yamazato, Katsunori and Frank Stewart, eds.Living Spirit: Literature and Resurgence in Oki-nawa. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,2011. (Contains The Cocktail Party.)

General

Kerr, George H. Okinawa: The History of an Is-land People. Revised Ed. Boston: Tuttle, 2000.(The best single-volume history of Okinawa inEnglish, from ancient times to 1945.)

Smithsonian Exhibit ControversyWebsites

Documents on the Decision to Use AtomicBombs on the Cities of Hiroshima and Na-gasaki. http://www.dannen.com/decision/

The Enola Gay Controversy: History on Trial.Lehigh University Digital Library http://www.lehigh.edu/~ineng/enola/

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. EnolaGay—Former Exhibition. http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal103/enolagay/

Books

Harwit, Martin. An Exhibit Denied: Lobbyingthe History of the Enola Gay. NY: Copernicus,1996.

Linenthal, Edward T. and Tom Engelhardt, eds.History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battlesfor the American Past. NY: Metropolitan,1996.

Nobile, Philip, Ed. Judgement at the Smithson-ian. NY: Marlowe, 1995.

O’Reilly, Charles T. and William A. Rooney.The Enola Gay and the Smithsonian Institu-tion. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.

Wallace, M. and Allan M. Winkler. “The Battleof the Enola Gay” in Mickey Mouse Historyand Other Essays on American Memory.Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.

�o �earn �ore

Mänoa Readers / Theatre Ensemblepresents readings of literature, drama,performance art, and mixed media, primarily in areaders-theater format. Presentations are stagedfor university, community, and statewideaudiences. MR / TE is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary initiative of the UHM OutreachCollege, Community Services Division, and the UHMCollege of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. Thecodirectors are:

Tim Slaughter, Director, Community Services Division, University ofHawai‘i at Mänoa Outreach College. Slaughter has studied andworked in the performing arts for over twenty years. He earned a PhDin theatre from the University of Hawai‘i–Mänoa in 1992. He wasproduction manager for Manoa Valley Theatre from 1983 to 1987,taught for Fresno State University in 1988 and 1989, becamecoordinator of the University of Hawai‘i–Mänoa’s Statewide CulturalExtension Program in 1992, and became director of the University’sCommunity Services division in 1999.

Frank Stewart is professor of English at the University ofHawai‘i–Mänoa; president of The Mänoa Foundation; and editor ofMänoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, a publication of theUniversity of Hawai‘i Press. Mänoa is the preeminent American journalfeaturing contemporary literature from Asia, the Pacific, and theAmericas. Under Stewart’s direction, Mänoa has published fortyvolumes and presented numerous events. manoajournal.hawaii.edu / manoaokinawaissue.wordpress.com

The world premiere of Öshiro Tatsuhiro’s TheCocktail Party is presented with support from

• Hawai‘i Council for the Humanitiesand the “We the People” initiative ofthe National Endowment for theHumanities

• UHM Center for Okinawan Studies

• University of Hawai‘i Japan StudiesEndowment

• Mänoa Foundation

• Mänoa: A Pacific Journal ofInternational Writing

• UHM College of Languages,Linguistics, and Literature

This special presentation is a collaborationbetween the Hawaii United OkinawaAssociation and UHM Center forOkinawan Studies.

University of Hawai‘i

Japan Studies Endowment

Center for Japanese Studies

Hawaii United Okinawa

Association