ABSTRACT
The Japanese generation emerging from the ‘burnt-out ruins’ at the end of the Asia-Pacific War are true survivors, many of whom still actively engage in the cultural and social panorama of contemporary Japan. As the papers in this special investigation demonstrate, this generation came of age during the most cataclysmic period in the history of modern Japan. The traumatic experiences and psychological constraints which they underwent had an immeasurable effect on their attitudes to life, but the misery of the past became a springboard for building a humane future. In the discourses that took place in post-war Japan, this generation played a leading role in all aspects of society and culture. The chapters in this volume explore, in a variety of ways, the impact of the yakeato generation on what may even be seen as Japan’s extended post-war period, which arguably still continues today. Thus, the overarching aim of this collection of essays, which focuses on what was once an entire generation of disenfranchised children, is to bring out the importance of their legacy as champions of pacifism. They survived the darkest hour of twentieth-century Japan and, in Nietzsche’s words, sought to revalue all valuations, or, rather, those that had served Japan so badly, particularly the feudal structure of Japanese society subservient to an emperor and the power of the military. For the yakeato generation these values no longer had a place in contemporary Japanese society and culture.
