Rinshō Kadekaru

Rinshō Kadekaru (嘉手苅 林昌, Kadekaru Rinshō, 4 July 1920 – 9 October 1999) was a Japanese-Okinawan singer who was known as a representativeOkinawan folk, shimauta, singer of the post-war era.

Kadekaru was born in Goeku Village, Okinawa Prefecture to Rintarō and Ushi Kadekaru. He was the eldest of three siblings, with two younger sisters. He began playing around with sanshin from the age of seven, and was strongly influenced by his mother, who was also a singer. At age eight, he collaborated with his mother to compose the song Haihan nu bushi (廃藩ぬ武士, "samurai of the abolished han").

Growing up, Kadekaru quit school at times in order to help his family with the farming; he held a number of part-time jobs, and performed, singing and playing sanshin alongside classmates and others in the neighborhood in local festivals.

At the age of 16, Kadekaru left home, using money he gained by selling one of the family cows to pay his fare on a ship to Osaka. There, he lived and worked in a lumbermill, delivering firewood to local businesses, and occasionally meeting with other Okinawans with whom he sang and played sanshin. After roughly three years in Osaka, in 1939, he returned home for a mandatory physical examination, as part of the conscription process, and was conscripted into the 46th Regiment of the Ōita Prefecture Army. He served as a member of standby reserves for two years, and then applied to work overseas while remaining in the reserves, and worked for a time on Tinian and Saipan Islands with a South Seas trading company. While on Saipan, he was also involved in an Okinawan theatre troupe on the side.

In 1944, while training on the Micronesian island of Kosrae, Kadekaru was gravely wounded, taken prisoner, and brought to a field hospital, where he remained for some time. It was feared that he would not survive to return to Japan, and a formal report of his death was sent out; Kadekaru did survive, however, and returned to Japan in November 1945, making his home in Zushi, Kanagawa. He spent the next several years touring the country with an Okinawan theatre troupe. He returned to Okinawa in the spring of 1949, and to his hometown after a nine-year absence; his father died earlier that year.　Kadekaru worked for a time driving a horsecart, and later overseeing the kitchens at a US military base.

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