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Greatest WWII Literary Works by Japanese Writers

oshima

後輩
15 Jan 2013
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Hello!
I don't know if any of you are interested in Japanese literature :? but in case you are..
I'm doing a school project about Japanese literature after WWII and I wanted to find out what are in your opinion the greatest WWII Literary Works by Japanese Writers.
 
I am scanning through my girl friends books- she did a thesis during her collegiate years on Korean Literature during the Japanese occupation, Korean War and Industrialization. Im not sure if it was published. She has this massive collection of Korean literature & even Japanese literature and it overwhelms our bookshelves (which she refuses to relinquish or lighten the load, even though she doesn't read them anymore....drives me nuts).

World War II, and Japan's defeat-I would say that many authors wrote stories of disaffection, loss of purpose, and the coping with defeat. Dazai Osamu's novel The Setting Sun tells of a returning soldier from Manchukuo. Known for its nihilistic writing and controversial suicide by seppuku.

I would personally advise looking at novels from the 1970s and 1980s, as there were more authors who identified with intellectual and moral issues in their attempts to raise social and political consciousness. I read A Personal Matter when I was a student in 高等学校 kōtōgakkōin, it was written around the 1960s (?) and was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Issues concerning the atomic bomb tend to be interesting pieces of literature and Mitsuaki wrote on problems of the nuclear age, while others depicted the religious dilemma of the Kakure Kirishitan, Roman Catholics in feudal Japan, as a springboard to address spiritual problems. A novel my girl friend has is Inoue Yasushi, who I believe turned to the past of Inner Asia and ancient Japan, in order to portray present human fate.
 
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