Reflecting on the Nation Through the Memory of Tanks: Ryotaro Shiba and Postwar Thought, 1945–1996

Ryotaro Shiba’s view of history was not merely a means of recreating the past; it was shaped by the question of how the Japanese people, having experienced war, would reevaluate their nation and society after defeat. Shiba himself saw the end of the war while serving in an Army tank unit, and against the backdrop of this experience, he repeatedly pondered why Japan in the early Shōwa period had lost its sense of rationality and plunged into a reckless war. After the war, he worked as a newspaper reporter before becoming a writer; while depicting the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods, he continued to question the relationship between the Japanese people and the nation. While *The Clouds Above the Hill* depicts the formation of the Meiji state, the fact that he did not portray the Pacific War itself as a subject of a full-length novel is also an important clue to understanding his view of history. In his later essays and interviews, he broadened his discourse to include land issues, globa lization, civilization, nature, the Emperor, and the Constitution, transforming the very act of writing history into a critique of postwar Japan. Shiba’s literature can be read not only as historical fiction but also as a form of contemporary thought that reflects on postwar society through the lens of wartime memory.