Jiro OsaragiCritiques

My copy. First published in 1960. This novel gives an excellent look at life in Japan in the period of transition from United States occupation.

It seems like it took me so long to finish this book, only 340 pages, but dense and slow moving.

Set in post WWII Japan, during the American occupation. A group of several characters, over the span of several months. It is about "journeys" in general and specifically.

In Japanese tradition, life is a journey "without destination". Much is made of the Western (American) influence to change this to one with a destination. By this the author means money. Over the course of the book most of the characters lose there traditional morals in the pursuit of money - "filling their rice bowl" in one way or another.

Specifically one of the characters, Soroko, tries to replicate a hike that his son Akira once made thru the Japanese Alps. Akira, a soldier, had died during the war and this hike is the father's attempt to connect with the sorrow of his son's death.

Throughout the book there is a sadness for a lost Japan. The author was born in 1898 and died in 1973 so he experienced this time period first hand.
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Very realisticaccount of the return of a Japanese man from formerly occupied East Asia after WWII
and his encounter withawoman he had known during the war. GIves a strong sense of the bitter
feelings in Japan just after the war

"The author adopted many different pen names in his younger days. 'Osaragi Jiro' had its origins in the mid-1920s when he was living near the Daibutsu-Great Buddha-in Kamakura and writing the historical novel, Hayabusa no Genji, for the magazine, Pocket. (The Chinese characters denoting 'Osaragi' are usually read as 'Daibutsu.') The name stuck."