The Responsibility of Memory - Akiyuki Nosaka in 1974

The Responsibility of Memory - Akiyuki Nosaka in 1974
It was 1974, a time when postwar Japan was trying to forget its own past in the midst of affluence. Akiyuki Nosaka dared to stand in the middle of the chaos with his four faces: writer, singer, defendant, and political candidate. In 1974, when social distortions were swelling in the shadow of economic growth and trust in politics was on the verge of collapse, he was one of the few expressive figures who "defied the age of pretense with words.
His narrative is full of irony and humor. His tone of voice is a biting satire on money politics, as he asserts, "Campaigning is the oldest method, and it has to be done in an untruthful manner. His laugh at the candidates who spend billions of yen on their campaigns, saying, "We will have a public election for 6 million yen," was like a theatrical performance exposing the ridiculousness of the system itself.
However, underneath the light-heartedness of the scene, there is a deep pain. He recounted his experience of losing his younger sister to starvation at the age of one year and three months immediately after the war's end, and asked the question, "What does the emperor look like? What does the Εmperor look like when he makes excuses for me? These words are not mere statements of anti-authority. They were an extremely ethical cry for personal remembrance of responsibility for the war.
At the time, the political winds were blowing in the direction of reviving memories of the prewar period, including the forced adoption of the Yasukuni Shrine bill and the movement to revive the Kigenbetsu holiday. Nosaka resisted this trend and linked personal pain to social responsibility, as he said, "The greatest crime is to let memories fade away. In his mind, there was no distinction between literature and politics. Both were "expression in defense of human dignity," and in this sense he was the last postwar writer before he became a politician.
Nosaka's words are etched with the duality of the Showa era: prosperity and emptiness, freedom and oblivion. With the news of the end of the Vietnam War, he tried to appeal to the generation of "children who have never known war" about the weight of what is silent and unspeakable.
In that year, 1974, his voice signaled the end of the postwar era and the beginning of the age of memory.