context re TAKESHI AND ICHIZO, THE KOMICAL KAMIKAZES

[pynchonoid]

[...] Ooka, who is perhaps best known in the West for
the novel _Nobi_ (1951),
translated by Ivan Morris as _Fires on the Plain_
(1957), and the memoir
_Tsukamaru made_ (1948), epitomized the Japanese
recruit of the latter
days of the Pacific War; he was ill-trained, badly
commanded, and largely
abandoned by the central military bureaucracy. 
Conscripted in 1944 at the
age of thirty-five, Ooka received three months of
basic training and was
subsequently sent to the front where he served as his
battalion's
communications man until his battalion was routed and
numerous men killed.
Captured in late January 1945, he was one of the few
who survived,
possibly because of his capture and ensuing
imprisonment.  Survival was
very traumatic for Ooka, who was troubled that he, an
unworthy soldier,
had survived when so many others had not.  Stahl's
provocative book
suggests that Ooka only began to process his guilt
feelings in early,
overtly autobiographical works, and that this process
was actually the
theme that grounded his postwar writing career.

Stahl posits that writing became Ooka's survivor
mission, allowing him
first to process and then to come to terms with his
own survival, by
working through issues related to the collective
Japanese war experience.
Stahl structures his argument around works written at
different points in
Ooka's career:  his early reportage and memoirs
(1948-50); _Nobi_;
_Musashino fujin_ (1950, _Lady Musashino_); _Kaei_
(1959, translated by
Dennis Washburn as _The Shade of Blossoms_, 1998); and
the monumental
_Reite senki_ (1967-1969, _The Battle for Leyte
Island_), serialized for
almost three years in _Chuo Koron_.  Stahl contends
that these works,
which also can be seen as a metaphor for various
points in the national
recovery, reflect the different stages of Ooka's
healing process. Although
bio-critical studies of this sort are not the most
popular approach to
literature at present, this kind of approach is useful
here because proper
appreciation of Ooka's work demands a consideration of
his life. [...] Stahl's conclusion, "Lingering
Obligations," recaps his argument
succinctly:  Ooka, a heavily burdened survivor of the
Pacific War, first
had to come to terms with his own war experiences
through his postwar war
memoirs and early novels; then, once he himself
reached a point of greater
integration and formulation, he could use his
knowledge in his survivor
mission.  Thus through writing, Ooka served as a voice
for the dead and
those who could not speak and also as a moral
conscience for the Japanese
people in the process of remembering the war.  In the
process, Ooka also
healed himself. [...] 

...from an article many Pynchon readers will find
useful:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=166461090730231

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Japan (July, 2004)

David C. Stahl. _The Burdens of Survival: Ooka
Shohei's Writings on the
Pacific War_. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press,
2003. 374 pp. Maps,
appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $49.00 (cloth),
ISBN
0-8248-2540-3.

Reviewed for H-Japan by Patricia Welch, Department of
Comparative
Literature and Languages, Hofstra University.

Memory, Guilt, Mourning and Responsibility: A Writer's
Pilgrimage




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