So Much for the Granta
World War II remains very contentious in Japan:
Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe has won a major court battle over a book he wrote more than 30 years ago detailing how Japanese soldiers persuaded and sometimes forced Okinawan civilians to commit suicide rather than give themselves up in the closing days of the second world war.
The ruling was also a high-profile setback for a vocal lobby among Japanese conservatives who have long sought to discredit or censure material documenting Japanese excesses during the war, including government-supported prostitution, the rape of the Chinese city of Nanking and other incidents.
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My grandfather was at Okinawa; he saw the people committing suicide, but doesn’t talk much about it. Terrible stuff. This reminds me of a talk by Salman Rushdie, in which he said basically that history as story persists and tells us our past better than any fact can.
As a German I keep reading discussions or taking part in them myself, on how my country is/was dealing with WW II. One of the complaints I hear most, is the call to forget, to not resume talking about painful issues. People often feel that the issue of guilt is too often pressed. The fact that this is not likely to happen here is why I like painful issues and guilt. Seeing how some Germans talk about WW II I am happy that some sort of collective feeling of guilt is preventing this hot water from boiling.
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