Critical Postwar War Literature

What is war literature? This chapter examines Japanese war literature as critical counter-narrative to official master-narratives of the Asia Pacific War. Rather than define war literature narrowly as works produced and published during the war – and thus compromised by the forces of ideology and propaganda on the one hand and censorship on the other – or narratives written by writers with direct experience of war, I argue for the reconceptualization of war literature that is not only inclusive of postwar and post-occupation works composed by survivor-narrators and witnesses, but also those created by second generation survivors and imaginative artists having no first-hand war experience, as well as novels heretofore not recognized as war literature, treating the enduring legacies of unresolved war issues.¹