ABSTRACT
The theme of redemption and salvation is taken up by O - e Kenzaburo-in
works such as ‘Ame no ki’ o kiku onna tachi (Women Listening to ‘The Rain Tree’, 1982), Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, Natsukashii toshi e no tegami (Letters to My Nostalgic Years, 1987) and Burning Green Tree.1 In dealing with this theme, as has been seen in many of his novels, O
- e varies the
same structure in a new context. Sometimes this technique works, for example where The Contemporary
Game is largely rewritten as M/T and the Wonders in the Forest, but often, as one begins to read, apprehension leading to irritation and outright boredom can set in as the same symbolic incidents are recounted anew.2 The problem for O
- e and for the reader is that in his narrative style of variation within
repetition, which he actively adopted, the variations are diffuse and disconcerting (brilliant individual passages intermixed with perfunctory ‘madeto-order’ characterization and substantial passages inserted reviewing his own books) and do not have the same overall impact as the core themes that he persistently repeats. This is a very significant defect, as the volume of works by O
- e is so large. Notwithstanding this fact, Letters to My Nostalgic
Years and the Burning Green Tree trilogy successfully connect in a number of ways, whereby O
- e is able to develop and strengthen coherently the over-
riding theme of redemption and salvation. The protagonist in each of the two novels is called Brother Gii. Before
beginning to discuss the two novels, it will be useful – indeed necessary – to list and explain the history and significance of the name ‘Gii’, which is attached to several of O
- e’s characters, each of whom is different. The first
appearance of Gii was in The Silent Cry, where a hermit named Gii was a legendary recluse who hid himself in the forest and was rumoured to have witnessed Takashi’s murder of a young girl. Hermit Gii then reappeared in ‘Kakujidai no mori no intonsha’ (‘A Hermit in a Forest of the Nuclear Age’, 1968).3 Here on the roadside he preached of the danger of nuclear proliferation and burned himself to death in a bonfire as if offering his body as a sacrifice in the cause of the anti-nuclear movement. In Letters to My Nostalgic Years, the protagonist is called Brother Gii. He
is part of a couple, the other being the narrator K, a novelist, who for all
intents and purposes is O - e. Brother Gii is an ex-prisoner, who returned to
the village after serving ten years on suspicion of having committed a murder. There he created an idyllic setting in the mountains, based on Yanagita Kunio’s model of ‘a beautiful village’.4 But he was murdered by villagers who, remembering their old legendary story of the Kowasuhito and the Fifty Days’ War (discussed in Chapter 5), fear that a lake he had constructed might harm the village lying below. The next Brother Gii, in Burning Green Tree, has no relation at all to his namesakes. He founds the Church of the Burning Green Tree in a village and is violently murdered in a form of self-crucifixion. Finally, in Somersault (to be discussed in the next chapter) there is Brother Gii’s son, Young Gii, who identifies with the spirit of the land surrounding his village. Apart from the continuance of a name, what do these figures have in
common? Hermit Gii, who burned himself to death by the roadside, gives voice to O
- e’s deep moral opposition to the development of nuclear arms.
Both Brothers Gii die violently, redeeming themselves through self-sacrifice, each leaving on earth a positive note that suggests the possibility of salvation, that one should ‘rejoice’ in life itself, despite evil and injustice. The word ‘Gii’, applied to characters, can be taken to stand for O
