The Japan Society Review 61
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 61 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

Japan and the Shackles of the Past

R. Taggart Murphy’s overarching history of Japan

Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice

Barak Kushner on a Cold War dynamic that continues to colour East Asian relations

Pinball Wizard

Murakami’s debut novels make their British debut

The Book of Tokyo

The world’s largest city in fiction

Throughout 2015 many people took part in events
marking the 70th anniversary of World War II.
Unsurprisingly, in the UK the focus was on the war in
Europe, but it is important to remember that the war in
the Pacific took place on a greater geographical scale,accounted for around fifty percent of the overall deaths
and casualities, and continues to play a major role inregional and international relations. Coinciding with theanniversary, Barak Kushner – a world expert on the legacyof the Asia Pacific War – published Men to Devils, Devils
to Men, looking at the trials of Class B and C war criminals
in China and Taiwan (Class A crimes were dealt withby the International Military Tribunal for the Far East inTokyo). In his review Sir Hugh Cortazzi looks in particular
at how the process was complicated by immediate postwar geo-politcal relations.
The Pacific War features heavily in Japan and the
Shackles of the Past, economist R. Taggart Murphy’s
meta history of Japan, although in attempting to explain

the coutry’s current economic, political and social
situation he goes back as far as the Heian era (794-1185).
Here, Richard Coxford suggests that readers may be left
frustrated by Murphy’s reliance on generalisations and anarrow range of American literature.
The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction was
released back in 2014, but has been growing steadily in
exposure and popularity in the UK. In her review Annabelle
Sami looks at whether it lives up to its hype. Finally, we
review works by two giants of Japanese literature. Chris
Corker looks at the first UK release of Murakami Haruki’s
debut novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball – what canthey tell us about the development of one of the mostsuccesful writers on the planet? While Murakami fanshave long been calling for him to receive a Nobel prize,
Ōe Kenzaburō became a Nobel laureate back in 1994, andat the age of 81 is still going strong. Here Charlotte Goff
reviews his heavily autobiographical Death by Water.
William Upton

Contents
1)

Wind/Pinball by Murakami Haruki

Editor2)

The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction edited byMichael Emmerich, Jim Hinks and Matsuie Masashi

William Upton

3)

Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes andChinese Justice by Barak Kushner

4)

Japan and the Shackles of the Past by R. Taggart Murphy

5)

Death by Water by Ōe Kenzaburō

Reviewers
Chris Corker, Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Richard Coxford, Charlotte Goffand Annabelle Sami
Latest Reviewswww.japansociety.org.uk/resources/the-japan-society-review(Image: Japan and the Shackles of the Past, cover)Wind/Pinballby Murakami Haruki, translated
by Ted Goossen
Harvill Secker (2015)336 pages
ISBN-10: 1846558352
Review by Chris Corker
These two novellas, available forthe first time in English outside ofJapan*, were Murakami Haruki’s first works. They form
the first two parts of the unofficially-named Trilogy of
The Rat, which concludes with the critically-acclaimed
Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami affectionately refers toWind (full title Hear the Wind Sing) and Pinball – both alittle more experimental and rough around the edges
than his later works – as his ‘kitchen table novels’,
written in brief snatches after finishing work at his jazzclub. Despite the difference in style between theseformative works and his mature oeuvre, however, thethemes are unmistakable as Murakami: a misanthropic
loner with a dry sense of humour bobs along in an
ocean of jazz, sex, booze, cigarettes and fleeting
liaisons with other misfits. Readers are naturally divided
as to whether this easy familiarity is one of Murakami’s
strengths or weaknesses.
Murakami now has an almost unparalleled fanbase, indomitable in its calls for him to win a Nobel
Prize. In Japan, at least, there is no author morefamous, and on the international stage – at least to thelayman – he is Japanese fiction. Yet it could have beena very different story. In an interesting introduction
comprising autobiographical shorts, Murakami tells
us that had the first novella, Hear the Wind Sing, not
won the Gunzo Literary Prize, his aspirations to beinga novelist would have ended there. The manuscript
he submitted – in the age of the typewriter – was his
only copy, and the prize did not return unsuccessful
entries. Also of interest here is a description of theauthor’s methodology. Unhappy that his early drafts
were florid, he resolved to write the first two chapters
in English before translating them back into Japanese.
Thus his economic and fluid style was born, bucking
the trend of other famous Japanese authors such as
Yasunari Kawabata and Jun’ichiro Tanizaki.
In Hear the Wind Sing our unnamed narrator isback from university for the summer, whiling away histime in J’s Bar with the trilogy’s titular character, The
Rat. There is always the nagging feeling that they arein a sense doubles leading parallel – albeit disparate
2– lives. In Hear the Wind Sing The Rat is only given
reality with the return of the narrator, like a character
coming out of its box. In Pinball they are dealt withseparately, although their fates still seem shared, andagain there is the sense that the disparity in their lives
is the product of minute chance rather than anything
more profound.
J’s Bar provides a backdrop for the character’s
reminiscences about their youths – their sexualconquests and their drunken exploits. Philosophylight rears its head in-between mouthfuls of beerand peanuts, and as is often the case with Murakami,transience is a common theme, characters coming
and going ‘like a summer shower on a hot pavement’.
Written in a casual and punchy style, Hear the WindSing is easy to read and often funny. It feels very much
like a first novel, crammed full of ideas and thirty yearsof life experience. At times Murakami’s innovations feela little forced – there is one short chapter comprisedof Beach Boys lyrics – but on the whole it remains
refreshing. The humour is at times extended to serious
topics. Mentioning The Rat’s father’s versatile andpopular, albeit dubiously effective, liquid formulas thenarrator notes that:‘[T]he same ointment slathered on the heaped bodies ofJapanese soldiers in the jungles of New Guinea twentyfive years ago can today be found, with the same
trademark, gracing the toilets of the nation as a draincleaner.’This quote, with its nihilistic meaninglessness
blended with dry, dark humour, is a good representationof the novel as a whole.
Pinball takes place three years after Hear the Wind
Sing, in 1973. The still nameless narrator has moved toTokyo where he makes his living as a translator whileliving, in a typically Murakamiesque phallocentricfantasy, with female identical twins. In contrast, The Rat,
who has remained in their hometown in an unfulfilling
yet apparently addictive relationship. He drives aroundthe town for something to do, always finishing up at J’s
Bar. These sections are the weaker of the novel. Goneis the fluidity, replaced by an overly descriptive style, inwhich similes and metaphors run rampant.
In Pinball’s stronger half, the narrator dwells on
the memory of an old girlfriend who killed herself,
her reasons a mystery. In his visits to the past, heremembers a pinball machine on which he used to play
in J’s Bar, and becomes fixated on the idea of playing
again. When he finds that the machine is incredibly
rare, he embarks on a frenzied search. A book he reads
Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

apparently gives him an insight into the emptinessthat drives him:
‘No, pinball leads nowhere. The only result is a glowing
replay light. Reply, replay, replay – it makes you think thewhole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity.’

Pinball paints a picture of early adulthood characterisedby anonymity and loss, and is not always as fun to readas Hear the Wind Sing. It remains intriguing in parts,
though, and the atmosphere of decline and dissolution
is perfectly apt for the death of childhood dreams.
Murakami fans will find enough familiar elements
here to feel at home, yet this is also this collection’s
weakness. Murakami himself doesn’t rank thesenovellas very highly in his oeuvre, which is surprisingfor one reason: Murakami hasn’t really changed asa writer since 1979, when Hear the Wind Sing waswritten. You’ll find mentions of wells aplenty, as wellas baseball and the other stalwarts such as jazz, and

The Book of Tokyo:
A City in Short Fiction
edited by Michael
Emmerich, Jim Hinks andMatsuie Masashi
Comma Press (2014)
224 pages
ISBN-10: 1905583575
Review by
Annabelle Sami
I had high hopes for The
Book of Tokyo. I expected from the title somethingof a literary tour through the city, or at the very least,
interesting and idiosyncratic snapshots, atmosphericvignettes, of Tokyo life.
However, the stories within the collection fail toconvey a sense of place, which is after all the pulling
power of the book, with enough clarity to make themenlightening in this regard to a British reader. The likely
audience for this book will surely be expecting to beable to ‘discover’ Tokyo through this selection of shortstories by ten different authors. Certainly, its emphatic
title and stylish front cover highly resemble a tour
guide (to the extent that someone on the tube asked
me if I was preparing to visit Japan.)
However the stories are too general to makethem stories about Tokyo. It feels as if some of themdeliberately avoid mentioning street names or
locations, and so they become more like insights
Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

women with apparently alluring physical deformities.
It’s embryonic Murakami, but it is all there. There are also
elements that seem to have been directly recycled for
Norwegian Wood, such as an ill-fated girlfriend named
Naoko and a belief that books by dead authors are theonly ones worth reading. If the reader can accept thatas their lot, then they will find this collection enjoyable.
Hear the Wind Sing especially, thanks in no small part toGoossen’s great translation, is a joy to read. If, however,
you are looking for a book that says something newabout the author, this would not be the place to start.
In these novellas, as in his later works, Murakami writes
Murakami.
* The books were previously available in Japan inEnglish, in an edition translated by Alfred Birnbaum
and published by Kodansha, intended for Japanese
students of English. §into contemporary Japanese life than anything more
specific. The mood of the stories is often that of
introspective contemplation; characters constantly
reminisce, trapped in their own internal worlds,
and this often leaves their external world – Tokyo –unmentioned.
The most disappointing factor was that the
majority of the stories were rather uneventful, lacking
the narrative arc that readers might expect of a selfcontained work of fiction. In particular ‘Vortex’ by
Hashimoto Osumato and translated by Yoneda Asa
was quite dull and monotonous as the main character
reflects on her life – something that seems odd toattempt in a short story.
The collection peaks early, its highlight thepairing of editor Michael Emmerich’s introduction
and the first story ‘Model T Frankenstein’ by Furukawa
Hideo and translated by Samuel Malissa. In his
Introduction, Emmerich describes Tokyo as having‘a sense of disorientation that blends seamlessly intoa seemingly opposite sense of rootedness.’ This was
mirrored well in Furukawa’s story whose peculiar
abstractness juxtaposed the insistency with which theauthor specified particular Tokyo locales. However,this is the one notable exception to an otherwise
underwhelming book. The Book of Tokyo remains
simply a good way to sample the writing styles often contemporary Japanese writers. Sadly, its claim tobeing ‘A City in Short Fiction’ is open to question.
3

Other authors and stories included in this collection:‘Picnic’ by Ekuni Kaori‘A House for Two’ by Kakuta Mitsuyo‘Mummy’ by Yoshimoto Banana‘The Owl’s Estate’ by Horie Toshiyuki‘Dad, I Love You’ by Yamazaki Nao-Cola‘Mambo’ by Kanehara Hitomi‘The Hut on the Roof’ by Kawakami Hiromi‘An Elevator on Sunday’ by Yoshida Shūichi§

Men to Devils, Devils
to Men: Japanese War
Crimes and Chinese
Justiceby Barak Kushner
Harvard University Press(2015)
403 pages
ISBN978-0-674-742891-2
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi‘War crimes’ judged at the international tribunal at
Nuremberg were divided into three categories. Class A
were ‘crimes against peace,’ Class B were ‘conventional
war crimes’ (such as rape, murder, illegal incarceration,
abusing POWs etc.) and Class C were ‘crimes against
humanity’ such as genocide. Class A war criminals
in East Asia were tried by the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. The trial
lasted two and a half years. Although Barak Kushnerdeals in his book with aspects of the IMTFE his focus
is on Class B and C war crimes and the way in which
trials were held in China/Taiwan. He stresses thatwar responsibility and war crimes are ‘two different
species.’ Kushner is senior lecturer in modern Japanese
history at the University of Cambridge.
Barak Kushner’s book ranges widely and deals
with issues beyond the definition, nature and legal
aspects of war crimes, covering aspects of Japan/China
relationships, which are relevant to our understandingof the issues between the two countries today.
It is based on meticulous and detailed researchin Chinese (and Taiwanese), Japanese and American
records. He notes that the trial records (p.20)
bequeathed a legacy of historical records about Japan’s
military action in China.’ Kushner draws attention to4

the relative absence of desire for revenge as shown by
Chinese treatment of Japanese guilty of war crimes.
Kushner’s first chapter, headed ‘Defeat in Denial,
The Regional Impact of Japan’s Surrender’, reminds
readers that the Japanese military in China werereluctant to accept orders to surrender as they did
not see themselves as defeated. Even though officiallyhostilities were over, Japanese forces remained incontrol of vast areas of China for some time after thesurrender. If all Japanese forces had been immediately
disarmed, there would have been chaos in parts ofChina. The same was true of parts of South East Asia. In
the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) and in French IndoChina the allies were at first dependent on Japanesemilitary guards.
The occupying forces in Japan were concernedthat the large number of Japanese returning from
China who did not feel that they had been defeatedmight pose a security threat to the relatively weakallied forces occupying Japan. Many Japanese who
had lived in China and Manchuria had indeed hoped
to be able to stay.
The Japanese authorities, aware at the end of
the war that war crimes trials were inevitable, madesome half-hearted efforts (p.51) to ‘chase its own war
criminals.’ ‘The pursuit of justice appeared secondary
to the aim of mitigating any blemish on the imperialprestige of Japan – seemingly unsullied even withthe unconditional surrender.’ One argument madeon behalf of those accused of war crimes was thatthe crimes were ‘merely “over-exuberance” on thebattlefield or, rather, the natural by-product of a fierce
war.’ Another Japanese report (p.54) argued that B &C class crimes trials were ‘misguided revenge, publicly
permitted under the guise of legality.’
The Japanese navy tried particularly hard toexonerate their personnel. A group led by a Captain
Toyota (p.56) worked tirelessly to encourage former
naval officers to lie under oath during Allied court
proceedings.’
Accusations were made that allied war criminals
e.g. aircrew who carried out indiscriminate bombingof civilian targets in Japan went unpunished. Some
Japanese also argued that Japan was more a victim
than a perpetrator.
Japan continues to suffer from amnesia about its
imperial past (p.230). Up to the surrender, Japanese
official propaganda maintained that its soldiers did
not give up until death. As soon as the war ended, theJapanese were very intent on saving from execution
those charged with war crimes. As Kushner points
Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

out (p. 314) ‘Japanese politicians continue to debate
legal minutiae in a manner that indicates an inability
to come to terms with the BC class war crimes trials.’
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in response to questionsin the Diet demonstrated in this context that he is amaster of obfuscation and avoiding responding to a
direct question.
Kushner has no doubt (p.63) that while ‘egregious
legal errors in trials did occur and should not be ignored,
imperial Japanese soldiers did commit grievous acts ofrandom violence, especially in China.’
Chapter 2 ‘Devil in the Details’ outlines Chinese
policies on Japan’s war crimes. The Chinese had muchto learn about international law, but their responses
were complicated not only by the extent of Chinese
collaboration with the Japanese in China but also by
the extent to which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
government were dependent on Japanese help in
pursuing their civil war with the communists. Kushnernotes (p. 103) that ‘some war criminals... were pawns
in the realignment of power during the immediate
aftermath of the war.’
The situation in Taiwan, which Kushner scrutinizes
in his third chapter, headed ‘Flexible Imperial Identity’,was even more complicated than in mainland China,
as the island had been under Japanese administrationfor over half a century when the war ended. Taiwanese
had been recruited into the Japanese forces. Someof them had served as guards at POW camps andtogether with Koreans and Japanese were accused ofmaltreatment of POWs.
In Chapter 4 Kushner discusses KMT (Kuomintang/
Guomindang = 国民党) trials of Japanese war criminals.
He points out (p.153) in commenting on the notorious
Nanjing massacre that ‘there were actually many
imperial Japanese military massacres on the way to thecity. Nanjing was not an isolated incident.’ As General
Iwane Matsui, who was regarded as having the main
responsibility for the massacre, was indicted before
the IMTFE in Tokyo, the KMT concentrated on trying
Hisao Tani, another Japanese general. One charge
among many (p.160) was that he had commanded‘a platoon that murdered 122 souls, wounded 334,
bayoneted 14, and assassinated and raped numerous
others.’ Tani who denied all the charges was foundguilty and executed.
Another example of a senior Japanese officer
indicted in 1948 was that of General Yasuji Okamura,commander of the China Expeditionary Army, which
adopted a policy (p.70) termed by the Chinese the‘three alls’ policy of ‘kill all, burn all and loot all.’ He
Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

was tried by a Chinese Nationalist Military Tribunal,
but on 26 January 1949 despite convincing evidence
against him was found ‘not guilty.’ The court had been
‘advised’ to come to this conclusion because Okamuraand his fellow conspirators in the ‘White Group’ were
thought too valuable in helping the KMT in theirstruggle against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In another trial of an ordinary soldier, Kiyoshi
Sakakura (p.64) confessed that he had taken part inone operation in which women and children wererounded up with bayonets and killed.
A further case, which Kushner discusses in somedetail, is that of ‘The 100-man Killing Contest,’ involving
two junior officers Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda.
The Japan Advertiser on 7 December 1937 (p.167)
reported this horrifying incident under the headline‘Sub-Lieutenants in Race to Fell 100 Chinese Running
Close.’ Whatever the truth about the details of thiscrime it is a gruesome story.
The KMT trials despite some flaws seem to havebeen reasonably well-conducted and Japanese war
criminals were not made the objects of revenge.
Kushner deals in his chapter 7, ‘Socialist
Magnanimity’, with the trials of Japanese war criminals
by the CCP. Many of these came into their hands after
internment in the Soviet Far East. The ‘vast majorityof Japanese prisoners (p.259) were released after
extensive investigation of their crimes where thegovernment chose not to indict, either on grounds of
benevolence or because the prisoners had sufficiently
recanted and “learned” from their time during
incarceration.’ In the CCP trials every single Japanese
admitted their crimes. ‘Unlike the KMT’s goal of merely
seeking justice, Communist China’s aim for its Japaneseprisoners... was to make war criminals reflect on theircrimes, and to turn them from “devils back into men.”’
The CCP were expert at brainwashing.
This book is an important contribution to thehistory of the years immediately following the end of
the war in East Asia. It is full of interesting and valid
comments and reminds readers of facts which tend
to be overlooked not least by Chinese and Japanese
historians.§

5

Japan and the Shacklesof the Past
by R. Taggart Murphy
Oxford University Press,
New York (2014)
472 pages,
ISBN 978-0-19-984598-9
Review by Richard Coxford
In Japan and the Shackles of
the Past, Tsukuba University
Professor for the MBA program Richard Taggart
Murphy brings to bear a customarily wide-ranging andcharismatic argument to the conundrum of modern
Japanese History. Murphy’s emotional investment in
his subject is on par with any author on Japan, having
first visited Japan around 1967-68, drawing on both hisvast business (and more recently teaching) experience,alongside reflections from a father who served in the
Pacific theatre and ultimately reconciled with Japan.
Where he perhaps errs is in writing too explicitly for
an American audience who he imagines will be mostly
ignorant of Japan, and going beyond the scope of hisstrong economic back-catalogue to attempt catch-all
History.
The chronology traverses from before the Heianera (794-1185) to the present day. Those cramped‘pre-Edo’ and nineteenth century chapters are allover the place structurally, but gamely illustrate theauthor’s views on Japanese national character bycriss-crossing Buddhism, Christianity, Chinese cultural
appropriation, early literature, the Emperor, Feudalism,
the appearance of Europe, and shunga (erotic art).
Also thrown in are some culinary, linguistic, andmusical tidbits. Problems abound, but glaring ones
include the exclusion of Westerners besides the VOC(Dutch East India Company) meaning total Japanese
ignorance of the world, either eschewing or unawareof the annual questionnaires the VOC answered on
the outside world. One which is equally entrenched in
the American literature on which Murphy relies is theminimisation of Britain’s impact. Crediting Perry withthe ‘scramble’ for Japan, he cites the 1776 and 1789
revolutions, Russian incursions, the Opium Wars andinternal unrest for the Bakufu’s fall, but belittles Britain’s
significant contributions. In reality, Britain pushed backRussian entry to a number of outlying islands, British
trading communities galvanised the push to negotiatewith Japan, and the Royal Navy catalysed the SatsumaChoshu rebellion and its ultimate success with the61863 Anglo-Satsuma war, but in this narrative Britain
is relegated to at best an incidental actor. Murphy
concedes that this grew out of a ‘quick and dirty
general survey’ and the lack of bibliography suggests
it has not evolved much since. Further compromising
its validity and displaying the lack of academic depth
is the fact that even the ‘recommended reading’ isinsanely brief for anyone trying to write a History ofJapan that goes beyond tourist vacation fodder.
Historical oversimplifications seem to be derived fromsynthesising just some of the prevailing American
literature rather than delving further afield, so morepedantic readers might be pained by the brevity
adopted. As a rejoinder to this book’s overwhelming
reliance on American debates, and for sustenancebeyond the Index’s cursory summaries of Meiji era(1868-1912) figures in particular, I recommend Ian
Nish, Par Kristoffer Cassel, Peter Lowe and Ishii Takashi.
Tracts of Murphy’s economic and genderhistory however could be repackaged into excellent
articles. Instead they are held captive within the shaky
generalisation of a Japanese national narrative, but
Murphy ranges with ease over the economic ‘miracle’,employment practices, the growing tax intake problem
in restructuring Japan, and most interestingly gendereconomy. An explicit discussion of career routes
historically available to Japanese women conforms
to the book’s sensationalism by overemphasizing
a paucity of options outside the hostess or sex
trade; but he takes a good stab at analysing genderaffairs. Murphy is very subtle in describing present
circumstances not as ‘Japanese feminism’ but abroadening of possibilities where much remains
to be done; namely, backing up buzzwords like
‘Womenomics’ with mechanisms for (for one) womento get fair treatment after marriage and childbirth.
Murphy delights in reeling off economic-politicalscandals, sustaining that Japanese businesses’ opacity
undermines their being a ‘proper’ capitalist economy,
and questioning Abenomics as a poor stopgap
solution to the growing clarion call for a ‘revolution in
Japanese internal business practices’. Clearly a sublime
business analyst, his diatribe on current Japanesepolitics misses the mark by unfortunately panderingto the lowest common denominator of contradictory
Japanese pacifism, condemning collective selfdefence as unconstitutional backwards steps to prewar Japan, while simultaneously awaiting the removalof US bases and the demise of the present American
alliance.

Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

The key to his overarching argument is theleitmotif of Japan as a well-worn tragic tale, that since
the Bakumatsu period (1854-68) Japan is an exploited,
culturally usurped nation and not much has changed
because the tribal system of patronage is called ‘feudal’.
On which note, if repetition easily sways you,then you will also acquire some slang. One phrase inparticular, used unashamedly often, undercuts thesignificance of even his finer political points, as hedescribes PM Abe as ‘KY’ (kuki ga yomenai, or ‘can’t
read the mood’). Peculiarly, pop culture analogies
run the gamut from Lord of the Rings to Islamic
extremism. Murphy’s argument can be enthralling, but
he has an alarmist, even conspiracy theorist, tendency
to adopt overly succinct teleological interpretations
and to exaggerate his case. One sentence certainties
proclaim that Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Korea campaign
caused the overextension and collapse of the Ming
dynasty (1368-1644), that Japanese short-sightedness
is to blame for Mao winning the Chinese Civil War, andthat all Japanese foreign policy since the occupation
has been trying to keep up with and desperately
understand the wishes of the USA. This latter point
is quite pernicious, because it overplays Japan’s
understandably important American alliance into acharacter assassination of post-war Japan. Murphy
unknowingly reinstates what Michael Auslin dispelled
about 19th Century Japanese diplomacy, that Japan isessentially a weaker power doing whatever it can toappease and survive its superiors. There is no small
irony in the way Murphy says Westerners still invent
Japans to suit their own purposes when he himself
invents this feudalistic vassal of America.
It is actually surprising that Murphy does notcite the unannounced movements of American
nuclear material into Japanese territory that occurred
sporadically in the Cold War, given it fits his style andmethod of denigrating both America and Japan. US
basing is an appropriate source of ire, as the average
servicemen of any nation find it hard living up to the
diplomatic billing of the country they represent, but
to an extent he lets his scorn for the treatment of
Okinawa (a ‘sacrificial offering’ from Tokyo) poison hiswhole argument. The American-Japanese relationshipis far from perfect, but even the fact that Japan getsthe entire umbrella of American support without
any reciprocal obligations to defend America issomehow portrayed as servitude. In light of errors,such as describing Japanese schoolchildren cleaning
their own school in the past tense and as evidence of‘Spartan schools’ created by GHQ/SCAP, and cites as
Issue 51 Volume 11 Number 1 (February 2016)

historical evidence works by the great writer Mishima
Yukio without acknowledging that brilliant writer’s
political extremity and self-wrought demise, it can be
hard to trust his judgement.
The more current affairs in his polemic cover
the modern Japanese diaspora, Japan’s self-defence
forces, the American security relationship, and a four
page mini-essay on how Japanese baseball defines themental world of the salaryman. From World War Two
onwards his book is all about America, with no timefor EEC/EU or British relations. Murphy juxtaposes thegood nature and ethics of the Japanese people, andthe Japanese political leaderships that manifest, whilearguing that those leaders have gradually declined inintelligence and competence reaching a nadir with
PM Abe. He produces a very spirited and thoughtprovoking defence of the DPJ’s 2009-12 time in office,cursing the treatment of Hatoyama Yukio by American
civil servants with institutional linkages to the LDP, andpuffs up former leader Ozawa Ichiro into the politicalmaneuverer who could have saved Japan. America
allegedly ‘destroyed’ the best Japanese governmentthat wasn’t, by pushing the DPJ out of power, as PM
Abe drags Japan backwards to the ‘kokutai’ (national
body politics, even Imperial devotion).
Murphy’s argument comes down in favour ofa rigid interpretation of Article 9, claiming that the
military is unconstitutional, yet he mocks the passive
and indeed compromising position of Japanesepeacekeepers, where in Iraq they were only allowed todefend themselves and only if fired on. Murphy sees
no problem in simultaneously querying the existence,and the efficacy of Japan’s strained self-defence forces.
Plus, he seems unaware of lesser-announced noncombat operations successfully executed by Japan tosupport her international allies, from the minesweepingof Japan before the peace treaty aboard USS Missouri
and Korea 1950-3, to efforts assisting counter-piracy.
Overall Murphy might wish to expand his readingmaterial before pontificating on security. Although
he perennially overplays the idea that Japan is a mereextension of America operating under some illusion of
independence, one good analytical point is that unlike
other close US allies there is no Japanese-Americanpressure group motivating caution in American
treatment of Japan.
This is the wrong book for anyone wanting tonourish their love of Japanese history, just as readersof the Japan Society Review are the wrong audience.
Shackles of the Past is decidedly aimed at Americans
with little knowledge of Japan. In spite of this, readers7

could sift out the economic chapters covering
the miracle, the high-speed growth, employment
practices, working hours and so forth, and gain somestandout economic history. Reading cover to cover will

Death by Water
By Ōe Kenzaburō
Atlantic Books (2015)
ISBN-10: 0857895451
Review by Charlotte Goff
In a small, forest-shrouded settlement in rural Shikoku, it is conventional wisdom that as a person
dies, he or she goes ‘up into the forest.’ Returning tothis, his childhood home, is Ōe Kenzaburō’s protagonist and recurring literary alter-ego, celebrated author
Choko Kogito. In Death by Water, translated into English by Deborah Boliver Boehm, Choko both revisits his
past and contemplates his own approaching path into
the forest.
For the past six decades Choko has been haunted
by memories of the untimely death of his father andthe uncomfortable question: could his childhood-selfhave done something to prevent it? Choko plans tofictionalise the episode, which saw his father set off
in a small boat during a torrential storm, to produce
a masterpiece: a ‘drowning novel’ that will redefine
his canon and bring closure to the doubts which havechased him across the years.
Unable to reconcile memories of his adored latefather with hazy half-recollections of things overheard
but not understood – his father’s meetings with local
soldiers and alcohol-infused schemes against theEmperor – Choko is convinced that the key to hisfather’s doomed voyage lies in the red, leather trunkthat his mother has until now refused to surrender.
Rather than providing illumination, however, thetrunk’s contents render the surface still more opaque.
Choko becomes an author who cannot write and sohe lends his creative power to the avant-garde theatre
troupe that take residence at his ‘Forest House’.
Choko is not the only one facing up to pastexperiences; Unaiko, a dynamic young member of
the troupe, uses theatre to confront her own traumas.
Her unique brand of performance art incorporates
audience participation, debate and ‘dog-tossing’. The
pelting of stuffed-toy dogs as a new and subversive
theatre form, along with its nomenclature, loses noneof its surrealism as the book progresses.

just serve to show how an argument’s strength can beburied underneath the weight of history, if history is
not managed diligently. §Ōe received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature forcreating ‘with poetic force... an imagined world, where
life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of
the human predicament today’. In Death by Water, what
begins as the struggle of one author slowly unfurls into a
drama concerning his family, the troupe of young actors,a small settlement in Shikoku and eventually Japanesesociety as a whole. It is the human predicament, again,that proves to be at the heart of this novel.
How do we define the spirit of an age and do we,
simply by virtue of living in that age, belong to it? How
do we come to understand and process traumas in our
past? These questions resonate in the latter half of thebook, and the answer to the second is a resounding‘through art.’ Ōe reminds us that beliefs, relationships
and memories built over decades can be fractured
through the utterance of a single word, as we see firsthand in the disintegration of the relationship between
Choko and – in another self-referential nod – his
disabled son, Akari. Reading this, one is reminded that
it is our perception of events that shapes our reactions
and future courses while what ‘actually happened’
rarely comes into it; much of what Choko learns about
his father comes not from red leather trunks but
memories revisited and reassessed.
Through Choko Kogito we see, or think we see,something of Ōe. Strip away the surrounding charactersand you are left with the story of an acclaimed author
whom the younger generation increasingly findirrelevant and who, looking back on a literary career
now in its late stages, wonders whether he could havedone differently, or better?
In one scene, a dog-tossing dramatic
performance of Soseki Natsume’s Kokoro, an audience
member stands up and references Choko’s recent
bouts of vertigo. These are, he says, ‘completely
understandable, since whenever we try to read his[Choko’s] convoluted sentences I think we all start
to feel a bit dizzy, too’. Reading this, I nod. There is alimit to my patience, which comes close to being
reached during pages of confused memories, stilted
correspondence and swathes of reported speech.
In this beautifully reflective and thought-provoking
tale, which progresses for the most part at an almost
imperceptible, meandering pace, I found that I wished
for a stronger narrative current. §