Spaces of Occupation in the Postwar Fiction of Hotta Yoshie

Abstract

This essay examines the postwar fiction of Hotta Yoshie (1918–98), a relatively neglected member of the postwar generation, whose work was shaped by his experience in Shanghai at the end of World War II and his subsequent return to occupied Tokyo. The essay argues that the topos of occupation forms an underlying thematic thread in Hotta's early postwar fiction, one that delineates a historical trajectory moving from the space of Japanese empire to the postwar reconstruction of the nation-state. Through the juxtaposition of wartime and postwar spaces of occupation, Hotta maps the ruptures and repetitions existing between the two periods, providing a key illustration of ways in which memories of empire continued to haunt the postwar literary imagination.