Title: Narrative as counter-memory
First published: 1998
Description: For the first time, this book offers an extensive comparative study of German and Japanese narratives that serve as a form of "counter-memory," in Foucault's phrase, for the two cultures. Rather than attempting to present objective or comprehensive views of history, these narratives draw upon personal memories to offer subjective, selective, and individualistic reports. They provide an alternative (or "counter-memory") to more official versions of World War II and its aftermath.

Major writers such as Mishima Yukio, Ibuse Masuji, Oba Minako, Gunter Grass, Uwe Johnson, Christa Wolf, and the Nobel Prize winners Oe Kenzaburo and Heinrich Boll are set in the context of lesser-known writers, including a nine-year-old child, a medical doctor, a woman who served as a journalist, and a former prisoner, to provide a broad cultural basis for understanding responses to the war from within the two societies.
Subjects: National socialism in literature, Japanese and German, World War, 1939-1945, Japanese fiction, History and criticism, German fiction, Atomic bomb in literature, Comparative Literature, Literature, Comparative, German and Japanese, Literature and the war, German literature, history and criticism, 20th century, Japanese literature, history and criticism, LITERARY CRITICISM, European, German, War and literature
Places: Germany, Japan
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PT772 .T33 1998