is a novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 by the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese author Oe Kenzaburo, first published in Japanese in 1972

1972 in literature

The year 1972 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Fiction:*Richard Adams - Watership Down*Jorge Amado - Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra *Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers...

. It has been translated into English by John Nathan and was published in 1977 together with Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, Prize Stock and Aghwee the Sky Monster

Aghwee the Sky Monster

Aghwee The Sky Monster is a short story/novel published in 1964 by the Nobel Prize winning Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe...

. The work deals with themes of militarism

Militarism

Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....

 and emperor

Emperor of Japan

The Emperor of Japan is, according to the 1947 Constitution of Japan, "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." He is a ceremonial figurehead under a form of constitutional monarchy and is head of the Japanese Imperial Family with functions as head of state. He is also the highest...

-worship through the reminiscences of an unreliable narrator

Unreliable narrator

An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...

.

Plot summary

The novella is set in the summer of 1970. It is narrated by a 35-year-old man (like all the characters he is not named) who is lying in hospital waiting to die of liver cancer

Hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Most cases of HCC are secondary to either a viral hepatitide infection or cirrhosis .Compared to other cancers, HCC is quite a rare tumor in the United States...

, although the doctors do not believe that the cancer is real. Early on in the novel, the narrator associates his cancer with the imperial

Emperor of Japan

The Emperor of Japan is, according to the 1947 Constitution of Japan, "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people." He is a ceremonial figurehead under a form of constitutional monarchy and is head of the Japanese Imperial Family with functions as head of state. He is also the highest...

 symbols, calling it, "a flourishing bed of yellow hyacinth or possibly chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemums, often called mums or chrysanths, are of the genus constituting approximately 30 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae which is native to Asia and northeastern Europe.-Etymology:...

s bathed in a faint purple light". He wears a pair of goggles with green cellophane

Cellophane

Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria and water makes it useful for food packaging...

 lenses. The story opens with a late-night encounter between the narrator and a "lunatic", resembling both the narrator's father and a Dharma

Daruma doll

The , also known as a Dharma doll, is a hollow, round, Japanese traditional doll modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect of Buddhism. These dolls, though typically red and depicting a bearded man , vary greatly in color and design depending on region and artist...

, who appears at the end of his bed. The lunatic asks the narrator what he is, to which he replies "I'm cancer" and throws his nostril clippers at the lunatic.

The remainder of the novel comprises the narrator's recollections of his childhood. The main narrative is periodically interrupted by discussions between the narrator and "the acting executor of the will", who is transcribing the narrator's story. Looking forward to his death, the narrator sings the song, "Happy Days Are Here Again

Happy Days Are Here Again

"Happy Days Are Here Again" is a song copyrighted in 1929 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen and published by EMI Robbins Catalog, Inc./Advanced Music Corp...

". He fantasises about obtaining revenge on his hated mother by summoning her to attend his death, and in his narrative tries to recreate his earlier "Happy Days" of the latter years of the Second World War.

His first reminiscences, however, are of the immediate postwar years, in which he was ostracised by the other children for his poverty and "animal violence". He was caught and humiliated by his mother attempting to commit suicide. He also remembers that by the end of the war he had picked up that his mother's real father had been executed for participating in a revolt against the emperor in 1912. She had then been adopted by a nationalist family working in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. There she met her future husband, who brought her to the village.

The narrator's father was 'associated with the military', and was part of an anti-Tojo

Hideki Tōjō

Hideki Tōjō was a general of the Imperial Japanese Army , the leader of the Taisei Yokusankai, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during most of World War II, from 17 October 1941 to 22 July 1944...

 movement in the Kanto Army

Kantogun

The , also known in China as the Guandong Army , was an army group of the Imperial Japanese Army in the first half of the twentieth century. It became the largest and most prestigious command in the IJA...

 to promote General Ishiwara; after the plan failed, he returned to the village on New Year's Day

New Year's Day

New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...

 1943 and shut himself up in the storehouse. There he wore the goggles later used by the narrator and used headphones to listen to a radio. The narrator's parents broke off contact with one another after the father's son by his first marriage deserted from the Japanese army

Imperial Japanese Army

-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...

 in Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

. Both parents sent telegrams to contacts in the army: the mother to help her stepson escape, and the father to preserve the family honour by having him shot. The son was shot. The mother claimed the ashes, and thereafter referred to her husband only as ano hito (あの人) — "that man", or "a certain party".

The narrator describes the time spent with his father in the storehouse after this breach as the first Happy Days of his life. They culminated in an attempted revolt led by his father on 16 August 1945, the day after the end of the war. The plan was to kill the emperor (to "accomplish what your father tried and failed to do", as the narrator's father said to his wife), and to blame the act on the Americans, thereby preventing the country's surrender.

The father takes his son with him and his co-conspirators as he leaves the valley. The group sing part of a Bach cantata (Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56): Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder, Komm und führe mich nur fort; Da wischt mir die Tränen mein Heiland selbst ab (Come, O death, brother of sleep, come and lead me forth; my saviour himself shall wipe my tears away). The father tells his son that the words mean that the emperor will wipe their tears away.

The plot is a failure, and the conspirators are all killed (in the narrator's opinion, "very likely" by American agents in disguise). At the moment of his father's death, he recalls that he saw, "high in the sky... a shining gold chrysanthemum against a vast background of purple light... the light from that flower irradiated his Happy Days". By the time he reaches this part of the story, however, his mother has arrived at the hospital, and it is she who wipes away the tears he sheds. She recalls that her son only survived the massacre of the conspirators because he had already run away. The "acting executor of the will" agrees with the mother, and from her words it appears that she is the narrator's wife.

Confronted with his mother's version of events, the narrator retreates further into his own world. He wears a set of earphones as well as the goggles, and listens to a recording of the cantata while singing Happy Days. He imagines himself back at the moment of his father's death, crawling towards a father figure so that, "his blood and his tears will be wiped away".

Criticism

John Nathan, in the introduction to his 1977 translation of the work, calls it, "Oe's most difficult and disturbing work to date". Like other commentators, he sees the novel as a response to, and parody of, the militarism

Militarism

Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....

 of Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima

was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...

, whose failed coup and suicide had taken place in 1970, the same year in which Oe sets his story. He ascribes its power to the tension between the "anger and longing" which he finds in the author's work. Susan Napier expands on this interpretation, seeing the narrator as feeling the desire to escape from his adult responsibilities back into childhood, and feeling resentment towards his mother who prevents him from doing so.

The difficulty of the novel can be ascribed to a series of disruptive narrative techniques. Episodes are related out of order, repeated and altered in each re-telling. Oe also blurs the distinctions between the different characters, by the fluid use of pronouns and the omission of quotation marks.

Oe uses the discussions between the narrator and the executor (towards the end, including contributions from the narrator's mother) to include criticism of the main narrative within the story. The executor asks about parts of the story omitted by the narrator, and suggests that he is hiding "unpleasant memories... creating the bloated feeling" Her comments also prompt observations from the narrator on his own story: when she questions his continual use of the term "a certain party" instead of "father", he responds that, "To make someone sound like an imaginary figure can be a way of debasing him, but it can also be a way of exalting him into a kind of idol". Michiko Wilson amplifies this latter point, arguing that this terminology furthers the identification of the father with the emperor, as he is traditionally not referred to by name.

The identification of the father with the emperor is only one of several archetypes which Wilson finds in the relationship between the father and the narrator: as well as emperor-subject, there are references to God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

-Christ

Christ

Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

 and Don Quixote-Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...

. Beyond the obvious satirical intent, she argues that these overlapping references are part of Oe's strategy of defamiliarisation, through which the reader is forced to look at events through fresh eyes. Another element of this strategy is the use of counter-intuitive contrasting pairs within the family: the small boy looks after his obese father; the mother tries to save her stepson, while the father tries to kill him; the son hates his mother, and (in the narrator's view) vice-versa.

Napier argues that the satirical aspect of the work is not completely effective. She notes the difficulty of having one narrator recount both his own romantic delusion and the sordid reality which undermines it, and comments that, "by having one narrative voice encapsulating both, [Oe] creates an ambivalent final impression".