Speaking from the Site of Defeat: Shohei Ooka and the Ethics of War Experience 1940s to 1960s 1940s to 1960s

Speaking from the Site of Defeat: Shohei Ooka and the Ethics of War Experience 1940s to 1960s 1940s to 1960s
Shohei Ooka's literature is born from the fundamental question of how a person who has experienced war can accept and narrate the reality of war. Ooka, who experienced defeat and captivity on the Philippine front at the end of the Pacific War, depicted the war not in terms of ideals or heroism, but from the perspective of individuals driven by hunger, fear, and self-preservation. What is shown in "POW Chronicles" and "Wild Fire" is the cruel fact of how far a human being can fall when a nation or organization collapses. As postwar society moved toward recovery with a sense of victimhood, Ooka turned his gaze toward the self, including the possibility of perpetration, and refused to isolate the war as an extraordinary event. His style of writing, which does not rely on the language of ideology or movement, but rather moves back and forth between record and introspection, leaving judgment to the reader, creates a strong ethical tension. Even in an age when memories of the war a
re fading with the progress of rapid economic growth, Ooka's literature, which continues to tell the story of the war without showing either heroism or redemption, is positioned as the core of postwar literature that resists forgetting.