Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.
Sto caricando le informazioni... The Breaking Jewel (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (edizione 2003)di Makoto Oda
Informazioni sull'operaThe Breaking Jewel (Weatherhead Books on Asia) di Makoto Oda
Nessuno Sto caricando le informazioni...
Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Set on an island in the South Pacific during the final days of World War II, when the tide has turned against Japan and the war has unmistakably become one of attrition, The Breaking Jewel offers a rare depiction of the Pacific War from the Japanese side and captures the essence of Japan's doomed imperial aims. The novel opens as a small force of Japanese soldiers prepares to defend a tiny and ultimately insignificant island from a full-scale assault by American forces. Its story centers on squad leader Nakamura, who resists the Americans to the end, as he and his comrades grapple with the idea of gyokusai (translated as "the breaking jewel" or the "pulverization of the gem"), the patriotic act of mass suicide in defense of the homeland. Well known for his antiestablishment and antiwar sentiments, Makuto Oda gradually and subtly develops a powerful critique of the war and the racialist imperial aims that proved Japan's undoing. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessuno
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)895.635Literature Literature of other languages Asian (east and south east) languages Japanese Japanese fiction 1945–2000Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
Sei tu?Diventa un autore di LibraryThing. |
Oda was a noted peace activist in his home country, but if there is any sense of this in The Breaking Jewel it is heavily disguised. Oda's soldiers in the story fight with 'honour' and 'courage' against 'American devils' who only want to wipe them out like insects; oftentimes, it seems like Oda's peace activism is of that distasteful and distinctly Japanese sort which basically amounts to 'isn't it horrible what the Americans did to us'. Maybe, because of the Japanese reluctance to face its wartime behaviour honestly, Oda's book is more potent in its original language, triggering some cultural mechanism or reaction. But a mere chronicle of a Japanese unit fighting to the death is less useful to a Western audience which already knows – unlike many modern Japanese – about the savage, masochistic death-fetish inculcated in the Imperial soldiers of World War Two.
Aside from one good anti-war line on page 59 (a soldier told to 'avenge' his dead wife and daughters retorts that "the Yanks he might kill probably also had wives and little daughters"), there is not much to recommend in The Breaking Jewel. Even its discussion of gyokusai, the banzai charge or 'breaking jewel' of the title, is rather feeble, and I finished the book with no sense of what, if anything, it was trying to say. Whether merely lost in translation or attributable to Japan's continued strange relationship with its fascistic war history, this story remains unknowable to me. ( )