Authors and Soldiers: Reconstructing History in Postwar Japan

Abstract

In 1940s and 1950s Japan, dominant histories of the Pacific War—the Asian-Pacific front of World War II—emerged that simplified the disparate experiences of those involved and influenced the memory of the conflict’s storytellers. In particular, there have been two officialized histories of the war and postwar periods—the former constructed by the Japanese wartime state, and the latter framed by Japan’s Allied occupiers. The Japanese government imposed the unifying spirit of kokutai (national spirit or character) onto its citizens, portraying them as completely loyal to the Emperor and fully devoted to the total war effort. During occupation, the Allies represented the war as a misguided effort by the Japanese political and military leadership who victimized the people, forcing them into ravaging the Asian continent. America was Japan’s liberator, giving the people a democratic government promoting egalitarianism and freedom of expression. But were there no efforts to problematize these officialized histories that obviously elided the war’s complexities? An examination of postwar Japanese literature reveals that writers not only engaged with the dominant histories characterizing the Pacific War, but they also often subverted, undermined, and overturned such narratives. The medium of literature allows writers to reach out to mass publics, and thus gives authors the ability to shape society’s historical conceptions— perhaps by perpetuating dominant views, rejecting generally accepted norms, or creating entirely new historical frameworks. This paper focuses on three authors who wrote during the Allied Occupation—Haruo Umezaki, Shohei Ooka, and Hiroshi Noma—in order to contextualize the writings of Akira Yoshimura and Hikaru Okuizumi, who produced works in the decades following American withdrawal from Japan in 1952. Furthermore, it examines their works dealing specifically with soldier experiences—Umezaki’s 1946 “Sakurajima,” Ooka’s 1948 Taken Captive and 1951 Fires on the Plain, Noma’s 1952 Zone of Emptiness, Yoshimura’s 1967 Typhoon of Steel, and Okuizumi’s 1993 The Stones Cry Out.1 These were the men who saw the effects of Japan’s total war mobilization on the ground. These were the men who most forcefully were