Keiko Ochiai Dialogue with Memory of Hunger - November 1970

Keiko Ochiai Dialogue with Memory of Hunger - November 1970

The original landscape of hunger, the food shortages of the postwar period, is depicted through the narrative of the writer, Keiko Ochiai. She recounts her childhood days when she ran out of food under the rationing system, and her memories of cooking rice scraps and potato peels she gathered from the ruins of the fire. Hunger, she says, is not merely a physiological affliction, but a social memory that is etched in the relationships between people, a shadow that lies deep in the hearts of postwar Japanese.

In addition, the memory of hunger is also associated with feelings of shame. The image of friends accused of stealing food, the gratitude for the rice they shared, and the solidarity and conflict nurtured in the days when they did not know what it was like to be full. These experiences were the starting point of Ochiai's career as a writer, and the soil that nurtured her eye for the weak.

This dialogue is more than a mere recollection; it raises a fundamental question for the reader: what is "hunger"? The postwar poverty described in the midst of economic growth provides an opportunity to reconsider the meaning of affluence. In an age when being able to eat is now taken for granted, here are "memories of hunger" that should be passed down to the next generation.