Novel
播州平野
Not translated into English
Yuriko Miyamoto · 1947
Opening lines
一九四五年八月十五日の日暮れ、妻の小枝が、古びた柱時計の懸っている茶の間の台の上に、大家内の夕飯の皿をならべながら、
「父さん、どうしましょう」
ときいた。
At dusk on the fifteenth of August nineteen forty-five, as she laid out the supper plates for the large household on the table of the living room, where an old wall clock hung, his wife asked:
“Father, what shall we do?”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from aozora.gr.jp
Synopsis
On 15 August 1945, Hiroko, who has taken refuge in a small town in Tōhoku, learns of the defeat; her husband, Shigeyoshi, is held as a political prisoner, according to a study from Hokkaido University. Learning that her brother-in-law has disappeared in Hiroshima, she sets out for her husband's family home, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and the train journey brings her across a naval officer, an amputee veteran and Koreans. It has been seen as a meticulous account of August and September 1945, centred on the moral bankruptcy left by the war.
Context
The novel appeared as a serial in the journal Shin Nihon Bungaku from March 1946; publication was interrupted, and the volume came out before the end of the series, only eleven chapters out of seventeen having appeared in the journal, according to the Hokkaidō study. It forms a pair with another account of the immediate post-war period by the author, and its heroine resembles her: she herself was living as a refugee in the countryside when the war ended, and her husband remained in prison from December 1933 to August 1945.
Who it is for
A travel novel across a defeated country, for those who want to read about the weeks that followed the Japanese capitulation.
Prizes and reception
Winner of the Mainichi Culture Prize for 1947, it was hailed by the magazine that published it as the greatest masterpiece of the postwar period.