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Requiem
The end of World War II in the city of Yokohama, Japan, is portrayed through the heartfelt conversations and letters of two young women. Setsuko and Naomi, classmates and friends living in a bombed-out city, sort through their individual "two girls, seventeen and fifteen at their next birthday, and though their real lives had yet to begin they were talking like old folk lost in reminiscences. Or perhaps this was their old age, for the hour of their death was near, as they well knew." Everyone close to Setsuko is dead as a result of the war, yet she believes in the war unquestioningly and writes letters to soldiers on the front urging them to fight to the finish. Naomi's father is imprisoned because of his anti-war beliefs and she struggles to find justification for war. Over the course of the novel, through flashbacks that occur within sentences or paragraphs, the horrors of the war are brought painfully to life and each young woman questions her own stand. Who is more patriotic? What are the rules of war when it is in your front yard? Shizuko Go, herself a survivor of the bombing of Yokohama, has written a devastating and important novel. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 18, 2021
”I must fulfil the responsibility of a survivor, on behalf of the dead who cannot speak for themselves; I must say what should be said and do what should be done.”
- Shizuko Go
When first published in 1973 Shizuko Go’s i-novel Requiem won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa prize but its action takes place nearly 30 years earlier, bringing to life episodes from the final years of WW2’s Pacific War. At this time U.S. military forces changed their strategy for defeating Japan and destroying its infrastructure, switching from precision bombing of mostly military installations to what was considered a more efficient method of subduing the Japanese population. They used a new form of incendiary bomb carefully designed to release and ignite Napalm over Japanese cities, spreading relentless fires in which people and animals were boiled or burned alike, some reduced to ashes almost instantly. The impact of these weapons was intensified because so many civilian families lived in traditional wood-and-paper homes, and it seems these densely-populated neighbourhoods were often pinpointed for maximum effect. These devastating firebombing raids were mostly carried out at night, bombs were dropped on their targets for hours at a time, killing and injuring thousands upon thousands.
Yokohama, home to Shizuko Go, was just one of the many Japanese cities singled out for firebombing. A schoolgirl at the time, Go lived through these raids but clearly never forgot what she witnessed or what was lost. Requiem’s set in 1945 and plays out through the thoughts and memories of sixteen-year-old Setsuko. In the aftermath of a particularly fierce bombing raid, Setsuko’s slowly dying in the rubble of a burnt-out shelter, her mother, father and brother are already dead. Setsuko’s story’s simply, directly told, her narrative fragmented to mirror the ebb and flow of disconnected images flowing through her mind. Although I found Setsuko's situation exceptionally moving, I was equally impressed by Go’s restraint, her refusal to settle for the obvious here or construct something reliant on creating a necessarily fleeting, emotional response. Instead, Go delves deeper into the machinery, culture and rhetoric of war itself, exploring the ways of thinking that might result in Requiem’s powerful scenes of loss and grief. Go interweaves Setsuko’s thoughts with letters between her and close friend Naomi, contrasting Setsuko’s stoical patriotism with Naomi’s more ambivalent stance. Unlike Setsuko, Naomi’s an outsider in her community, ostracised after her father’s imprisonment for ideological crimes, typified by his fondness for pacifist writer Roger Martin du Gard whose work’s referenced throughout, skilfully highlighting Go’s questioning of the whole process of war. Ultimately Go’s memorable novel’s both a powerful indictment of war and, through Setsuko’s eyes, a richly detailed recreation of the realities of daily life in Yokohama during wartime. And it’s fluently, ably translated in this edition by Geraldine Harcourt.
- Shizuko Go
When first published in 1973 Shizuko Go’s i-novel Requiem won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa prize but its action takes place nearly 30 years earlier, bringing to life episodes from the final years of WW2’s Pacific War. At this time U.S. military forces changed their strategy for defeating Japan and destroying its infrastructure, switching from precision bombing of mostly military installations to what was considered a more efficient method of subduing the Japanese population. They used a new form of incendiary bomb carefully designed to release and ignite Napalm over Japanese cities, spreading relentless fires in which people and animals were boiled or burned alike, some reduced to ashes almost instantly. The impact of these weapons was intensified because so many civilian families lived in traditional wood-and-paper homes, and it seems these densely-populated neighbourhoods were often pinpointed for maximum effect. These devastating firebombing raids were mostly carried out at night, bombs were dropped on their targets for hours at a time, killing and injuring thousands upon thousands.
Yokohama, home to Shizuko Go, was just one of the many Japanese cities singled out for firebombing. A schoolgirl at the time, Go lived through these raids but clearly never forgot what she witnessed or what was lost. Requiem’s set in 1945 and plays out through the thoughts and memories of sixteen-year-old Setsuko. In the aftermath of a particularly fierce bombing raid, Setsuko’s slowly dying in the rubble of a burnt-out shelter, her mother, father and brother are already dead. Setsuko’s story’s simply, directly told, her narrative fragmented to mirror the ebb and flow of disconnected images flowing through her mind. Although I found Setsuko's situation exceptionally moving, I was equally impressed by Go’s restraint, her refusal to settle for the obvious here or construct something reliant on creating a necessarily fleeting, emotional response. Instead, Go delves deeper into the machinery, culture and rhetoric of war itself, exploring the ways of thinking that might result in Requiem’s powerful scenes of loss and grief. Go interweaves Setsuko’s thoughts with letters between her and close friend Naomi, contrasting Setsuko’s stoical patriotism with Naomi’s more ambivalent stance. Unlike Setsuko, Naomi’s an outsider in her community, ostracised after her father’s imprisonment for ideological crimes, typified by his fondness for pacifist writer Roger Martin du Gard whose work’s referenced throughout, skilfully highlighting Go’s questioning of the whole process of war. Ultimately Go’s memorable novel’s both a powerful indictment of war and, through Setsuko’s eyes, a richly detailed recreation of the realities of daily life in Yokohama during wartime. And it’s fluently, ably translated in this edition by Geraldine Harcourt.
January 11, 2021
Nowadays, though, she might write to her brother "Take care of yourself," but not "Please fight for the country with all your might." She had learned how hard her young heart must have been to have written that message over and over without a twinge of pain.A few GR people have this marked down as Young Adult, for whatever reason. It's about as Young Adult as Grave of the Fireflies is a children's movie, in that both happen to children and young adults and that's just the way it goes. Those who sniff and sneer at the younger audiences of genres, be grateful that these still fairly recent inventions of childhood and young adulthood didn't, in your case, incorporate all the trials and tribulations of firebombs and politics. Death has no minimum age. Consumption has no minimum age. Ideological indoctrination via imperialism and the military industrial complex has no minimum age, and if you can't tell whether I'm speaking of Japan or my own country: good. Even this gun-filled landscape of mine has its pockets where children viewed less as a target of mockery and more as target practice, but that's a story for another book.
They'll shout their slogans about its sacredness and a hundred million glorious deaths, just as long as it's the common people whose lives are at stake, but when it's their turn, and the imperial system and the state itself—the justification for all their actions—come under threat, then there's no reason for them to continue the war.I keep coming back to World War II in reading because a. things get published and b. as time passes, more of the blanks continually erased by the dominant discourse are slowly but surely being filled in. There's not many fundamental differences between what this author wrote and her own experiences as a young Japanese girl in the early middle of the twentieth century, so if you want to quibble about textual condemnation of the Rape of Nanking, you've come to the wrong place. This is war. That means suicide instead of defeat, the leeching of traitors, sacrifice upon sacrifice upon sacrifice until pride outlives faith and survival is rendered nonsensical by being the only one left. It does not often mean a socioeconomic evaluation of life and death on a global scale, but here the author puts this to the forefront, for which I am grateful. Such a viewpoint makes the publication of this in English translation unsurprising, but when the US has as much a penchant for the enshrinement of war criminals in the slightly different terms of city streets and dollar bills, some ugly truths surface as a direct result of the stifling.
Well, I thought, America's not stingy with its bombs.Don't read this if you're looking for a happy ending, or a reason to hate Japanese people, or a reason to hate women, or a reason to hate Japanese women, etc, etc, etc. it's a semi-epistolary novel between two Japanese girls on the cusp of respective adulthoods, opposite sides of a nurturing dichotomy rendered null and void by military operations and various lists of casualties. Give it to your kid, if you like, but only if you're prepared to tell the truth.
And people will still have to go on living after the war's over, you know.
August 26, 2015
Requiem is a classic “I-novel,” in which the author’s own experiences are related in the third person via a fictional alter ego. Shizuko Gô (1929-2014) was sixteen and suffering from tuberculosis when—quite by chance—she survived the firebombing of Yokohama in May 1945. The same is true of the heroine of this novel, Ôizumi Setsuko, whose experience of the aftermath of the raids is described pp. 57-65. Setsuko survives, only to succumb to illness just as the American occupation troops begin to arrive.
The novel is cleverly constructed as if to reflect the chaotic dreams of a young woman slipping in and out of consciousness: vivid memories rise to the surface and are narrated, then fade with the dawning of another day that Setsuko will have to drag herself through, unable to conceive of surrender.
Setsuko’s convictions depicted here and her numb acceptance of the death of everyone she has ever cared for ring absolutely true. The scene above continues:
There’s a subplot, told via letters, involving Naomi, a school friend of Setsuko’s whose father, a scholar of French literature, is imprisoned for thought crimes, including ordering the novel Les Thibault (1922-40) by Roger Martin du Gard (1881-1958) from the Maruzen bookstore. This subplot enables the author to present the views of another young woman, one who saw the war differently from Setsuko’s blind faith. But in the end Requiem is, I think, the author’s act of atonement for surviving:
The novel is cleverly constructed as if to reflect the chaotic dreams of a young woman slipping in and out of consciousness: vivid memories rise to the surface and are narrated, then fade with the dawning of another day that Setsuko will have to drag herself through, unable to conceive of surrender.
She knew Japan wasn’t winning. But defeat and surrender weren’t the same thing. They might be beaten, but they would never surrender. They would fight till the last man, woman and child had fallen. Wasn’t that why, each time there was news of a Glorious Sacrifice—Attu, Saipan, Okinawa—they had sworn with ever-deeper conviction to defend their homeland against invasion? So Setsuko had been taught, had believed, had lived. (p. 21)
Setsuko’s convictions depicted here and her numb acceptance of the death of everyone she has ever cared for ring absolutely true. The scene above continues:
When the all clear sounded, Setsuko spread out one of the pieces of newspaper she was carrying instead of tissue paper, and lowered [workmate] Jun Sawabe’s head onto it. Then she covered his face with a white square of artificial silk, a special-issue item for bombed out families. And then she went slowly back to her workplace, alone. She stopped at the washbasin to rinse the blood from her hands and drink a little water. “Mr. Sawabe of Section Three has died in action.” (p. 21)
There’s a subplot, told via letters, involving Naomi, a school friend of Setsuko’s whose father, a scholar of French literature, is imprisoned for thought crimes, including ordering the novel Les Thibault (1922-40) by Roger Martin du Gard (1881-1958) from the Maruzen bookstore. This subplot enables the author to present the views of another young woman, one who saw the war differently from Setsuko’s blind faith. But in the end Requiem is, I think, the author’s act of atonement for surviving:
It was agony to think of those who would not rise: the dead would be left where they fell at the ends of the earth while the living would come home with their knapsacks of clothing and food. Whether they had gone to the front or stayed at home, the people had staked their lives for country and Emperor, and after they had lost, the country and the Emperor were still there. Then what had it all meant? (p. 97)
June 22, 2019
Setsuko verbringt ihre letzten Tage schwerkrank in einem provisorischen Luftschutzbunker in Yokohama und im Fieberwahn rekapituliert sie ihr Leben; die Familie, der Nationalismus, die Arbeit in der Fabrik, ihre Schulzeit, das Zusammensein mit der Freundin Naomi, der Tod der Mutter, die Absenz des Vaters. Ein Text in Ausrissen, Szenen, Fragmenten und Briefen, die sie mit Naomi austauscht.
Das macht den "Roman" mitunter schwer zu lesen, da die vielen Sprünge den Leser unvermittelt in neue Ereignisse hinein katapultieren, die weder eingeführt noch erläutert werden. Erst im Laufe der Zeit ergibt sich so etwas wie eine kohärente Narration - allerdings muss sich das der Leser aus den ganzen Bruchstücken selbst zusammen setzen.
Ein anspruchsvoller Text, der zudem an die Nieren geht. Er erinnert an die "Letzten Glühwürmchen", "Barfuß durch Hiroshima" oder auch an Masuji Ibuses Meisterwerk "Schwarzer Regen" aka. "Black Rain". Sehr lesenswert und antiquarisch noch gut erhältlich.
Das macht den "Roman" mitunter schwer zu lesen, da die vielen Sprünge den Leser unvermittelt in neue Ereignisse hinein katapultieren, die weder eingeführt noch erläutert werden. Erst im Laufe der Zeit ergibt sich so etwas wie eine kohärente Narration - allerdings muss sich das der Leser aus den ganzen Bruchstücken selbst zusammen setzen.
Ein anspruchsvoller Text, der zudem an die Nieren geht. Er erinnert an die "Letzten Glühwürmchen", "Barfuß durch Hiroshima" oder auch an Masuji Ibuses Meisterwerk "Schwarzer Regen" aka. "Black Rain". Sehr lesenswert und antiquarisch noch gut erhältlich.
January 23, 2008
Shizuko Go, Requiem (Kodansha International, 1973)
One of the review blurbs on the back of Requiem calls it "The Japanese counterpart of Anne Frank's diary". Actually, Requiem is a much better book than The Diary of a Young Girl; Go does a fine job of weaving her main character's dying moments in with recollections of the last year of her life. Go gives us no illusions from page one; her main character, Setsumo Oizumi, is lying in a bomb shelter close to death, clutching a grey notebook containing letters from her best friend, Naomi Niwa, and the flashbacks alternate between letters between the two of them and scenes from Oizumi's life.
Where this short novel fails, and this is rare in Japanese novels, is in its lack of reserve. Go wanted to pen a horrors-of-war novel, and for the most part she succeeds. Much of the book uses the imagery of war, and Oizumis developing disillusionment with the war effort, to convey its pacifist message. But every once in a while Go drops the veil and comes out with a passage where the message overrides the medium; the book goes from a fine, sparse novel to a political polemic. There is never a point where this gets out of hand, and Go recovers herself quickly every time; still, one feels that perhaps one final revision under the watchful eye of an editor concerned more with the craft of writing than the art might have been a good idea.
Still, there is much to like here. You can safely ignore another of the reviewlets on the back ("Should be compulsory reading for every Western schoolchild.") that would imply this to be a "bad Americans! go to your room without supper!" polemic; there is more of All Quiet on the Western Front here than there is Johnny Got His Gun, and Go's message is directed not at any one set of allies but at the futility of war in general. There are no guilt trips to be had aside from those all of humanity shares. Recommended. *** ½
One of the review blurbs on the back of Requiem calls it "The Japanese counterpart of Anne Frank's diary". Actually, Requiem is a much better book than The Diary of a Young Girl; Go does a fine job of weaving her main character's dying moments in with recollections of the last year of her life. Go gives us no illusions from page one; her main character, Setsumo Oizumi, is lying in a bomb shelter close to death, clutching a grey notebook containing letters from her best friend, Naomi Niwa, and the flashbacks alternate between letters between the two of them and scenes from Oizumi's life.
Where this short novel fails, and this is rare in Japanese novels, is in its lack of reserve. Go wanted to pen a horrors-of-war novel, and for the most part she succeeds. Much of the book uses the imagery of war, and Oizumis developing disillusionment with the war effort, to convey its pacifist message. But every once in a while Go drops the veil and comes out with a passage where the message overrides the medium; the book goes from a fine, sparse novel to a political polemic. There is never a point where this gets out of hand, and Go recovers herself quickly every time; still, one feels that perhaps one final revision under the watchful eye of an editor concerned more with the craft of writing than the art might have been a good idea.
Still, there is much to like here. You can safely ignore another of the reviewlets on the back ("Should be compulsory reading for every Western schoolchild.") that would imply this to be a "bad Americans! go to your room without supper!" polemic; there is more of All Quiet on the Western Front here than there is Johnny Got His Gun, and Go's message is directed not at any one set of allies but at the futility of war in general. There are no guilt trips to be had aside from those all of humanity shares. Recommended. *** ½
December 12, 2020
it intentionally seemed flat, off-key, and fragmented like a dream. war really is senseless LOL
June 15, 2024
3 stars for some powerful descriptions of devastation and desperation.
The book is organized around a series of vignettes, letters, and narrative which could be more effective if they followed a more organized structure. It is not hard to trace the separate timelines, but there doesn't seem to be any enlightening thematic juxtapositions as a result of the technique, except for that of life at the temple contrasted to that in Yokohama.
The main character is a 16-year-old girl, and the anti-war message of the book, such as it is, is a sentiment a 16-year-old might have: why can't we all just get along? A good question, but the novel does not directly face the real issues - nationalism, imperialism, and conformity. There are only mere hints of injustice: a couple of political prisoners who are given little voice, a brief mention of the Nanking Massacre.
Any criticism of Japan's role in atrocities and aggression is so subtle that it is almost undetectable. Realizations only extend as far as "I believed that rather than surrender Japan would fight to the last person and that 100 million people would commit suicide if we lost, BUT THAT ISN'T TRUE!" may have seemed extremely edgy and shocking in 1972 Japan, but viewed through a 2024 Western lens it is insipid.
Perhaps there is more to the themes if the book is read in Japanese, but my impression is that there is a huge blind spot in this text that may be more visible to a Western reader: conformity often leads to nationalism, imperialism, and the resulting atrocities. This is evident in the letters between Setsuko and Naomi. They begin with an apology and an admission of inadequacy, and they often concern shame and criticism over not doing one's "duty": not working hard enough to support the war, selfishly staying home with tuberculosis instead of working, family members who are not dutiful enough, not suffering enough, not being a worthy Japanese.
Imperial Japan was monstrous and evil. Nanking is mentioned in the book and is a shocking example, but it is also described as a "free-for-all" when in fact it was sanctioned, supported, and encouraged by the nation of Japan. August 15, 1945 - which is mentioned in the book - was a significant day not only because it was the end of the war but because it freed Korea from a 35-year occupation/annexation and attempt to completely exterminate Korean culture. That is not mentioned in the book and can't be explained away as an example of the "savagery of war."
One-timer and to the donation bin!
The book is organized around a series of vignettes, letters, and narrative which could be more effective if they followed a more organized structure. It is not hard to trace the separate timelines, but there doesn't seem to be any enlightening thematic juxtapositions as a result of the technique, except for that of life at the temple contrasted to that in Yokohama.
The main character is a 16-year-old girl, and the anti-war message of the book, such as it is, is a sentiment a 16-year-old might have: why can't we all just get along? A good question, but the novel does not directly face the real issues - nationalism, imperialism, and conformity. There are only mere hints of injustice: a couple of political prisoners who are given little voice, a brief mention of the Nanking Massacre.
Any criticism of Japan's role in atrocities and aggression is so subtle that it is almost undetectable. Realizations only extend as far as "I believed that rather than surrender Japan would fight to the last person and that 100 million people would commit suicide if we lost, BUT THAT ISN'T TRUE!" may have seemed extremely edgy and shocking in 1972 Japan, but viewed through a 2024 Western lens it is insipid.
Perhaps there is more to the themes if the book is read in Japanese, but my impression is that there is a huge blind spot in this text that may be more visible to a Western reader: conformity often leads to nationalism, imperialism, and the resulting atrocities. This is evident in the letters between Setsuko and Naomi. They begin with an apology and an admission of inadequacy, and they often concern shame and criticism over not doing one's "duty": not working hard enough to support the war, selfishly staying home with tuberculosis instead of working, family members who are not dutiful enough, not suffering enough, not being a worthy Japanese.
Imperial Japan was monstrous and evil. Nanking is mentioned in the book and is a shocking example, but it is also described as a "free-for-all" when in fact it was sanctioned, supported, and encouraged by the nation of Japan. August 15, 1945 - which is mentioned in the book - was a significant day not only because it was the end of the war but because it freed Korea from a 35-year occupation/annexation and attempt to completely exterminate Korean culture. That is not mentioned in the book and can't be explained away as an example of the "savagery of war."
One-timer and to the donation bin!
May 19, 2019
A powerful and moving novel that deals with war, patriotism and pacifism. As relevant today as it was when it was first published.
May 9, 2019
It's hard to read such a story.
But this was excellent in it's writing, structure and deployment of the scenes and plot.
Somehow Shizuko Go gave expression to what barely can be imagined, but was/is the truth for human beings affected by war.
We all know natural disaster or accidents make no "sense"... but war, the humans cause it knowingly, and that makes the absurdity of the misery humans have to endure due to war even more gripping.
Maybe all people who aspire to go into politics should be first forced to work thru a reading list of books about war, just to make sure they have a clear understanding of the concrete human impact of nation wide violence, and then this book could be part of the top 10 of mandatory reading.
Yet, testimonials or no testimonials, it just keeps happening. For an ideal. An ideology. To protect the riches of some countries against the poverty of other's. For no good reason, as there can't be a reason to justify what is described in this novel. (... based on biographical elements from the author - ... )
But this was excellent in it's writing, structure and deployment of the scenes and plot.
Somehow Shizuko Go gave expression to what barely can be imagined, but was/is the truth for human beings affected by war.
We all know natural disaster or accidents make no "sense"... but war, the humans cause it knowingly, and that makes the absurdity of the misery humans have to endure due to war even more gripping.
Maybe all people who aspire to go into politics should be first forced to work thru a reading list of books about war, just to make sure they have a clear understanding of the concrete human impact of nation wide violence, and then this book could be part of the top 10 of mandatory reading.
Yet, testimonials or no testimonials, it just keeps happening. For an ideal. An ideology. To protect the riches of some countries against the poverty of other's. For no good reason, as there can't be a reason to justify what is described in this novel. (... based on biographical elements from the author - ... )
September 28, 2017
Sometimes poignant, but just as often melodramatic, and for the most part dull. I have to be honest -- even at a mere 122 pages, it felt like a slog. I usually dig the relentlessly grim, but Gō's scattershot construction left me unable to feel much of anything for the characters.
June 27, 2022
Brief, matter-of-fact consciousness of a young girl dying realising that the "truth" she's been taught to dedicate her whole young life to is just meant to enslave her willingly to be a tool in the Emperor's power (but applies to any country) and has cost not only the lives of her friends and family, which she could not help, but her own deepest friendship (the love of such early years) because she could not renounce it to stay by her friend's side. It's not "I regret" but an accurate depiction of how, when you've paid a great sacrifice for something, you just can't give it up, like Ukrainian soldiers saying they had to stay and fight in an exposed place because of how many they had lost defending it. "There were no dividing lines on the earth's surface when it was formed. Who thought them up? How happy we could live if we erased the lines and were simply people". "[her] love for her [friend] too was unchanged. She could not yet understand [still a child] that the cause of the rift between them went beyond their wills." [SPOILER alert] At the end, it turns out that she still believes in her love for her brother and dies when (because?) she realises he isn't there.
3 not 4 because it's basically a brief tragic antiwar book, very close to (that animated film title Fireflies) and All Quiet On The Western Front (but no fighting) "innocents realise war is pointless but die too late" (making them double or triple innocents: too young, deluded, never corrupt their pure souls by forgetting others' sacrifices and having fun, too young to be impure..). The message is necessary & timeless, sadly, which is enough reason to recommend it without calling it great rather than good. Primo Levi remains the book on war.
3 not 4 because it's basically a brief tragic antiwar book, very close to (that animated film title Fireflies) and All Quiet On The Western Front (but no fighting) "innocents realise war is pointless but die too late" (making them double or triple innocents: too young, deluded, never corrupt their pure souls by forgetting others' sacrifices and having fun, too young to be impure..). The message is necessary & timeless, sadly, which is enough reason to recommend it without calling it great rather than good. Primo Levi remains the book on war.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2019
Review here.
June 10, 2020
A devastating picture of the horrors suffered by Japanese civilans in the closing years of WW2 mediated through the relationship between two teenage girls.
August 25, 2023
yikes. Should be required school reading
October 15, 2011
This book was incredible, it pulls at the strings of the heart, and is truly soul wrenching. It's amazingly beautiful and despairingly ugly at the same time. All I wish is that I would've found this book sooner.
The book is about Setsuko, a sixteen year old dying in an air-raid shelter, as she goes back through her memories and lift of growing up in WWII japan as a patriotic Japanese girl and her friendship with Naomi the daughter of a man imprisoned for the crime of "Thought."
I would recommend this book for anyone.
The book is about Setsuko, a sixteen year old dying in an air-raid shelter, as she goes back through her memories and lift of growing up in WWII japan as a patriotic Japanese girl and her friendship with Naomi the daughter of a man imprisoned for the crime of "Thought."
I would recommend this book for anyone.
June 2, 2025
Poignant and beautiful, this book unpacks our strongly held beliefs, holds the remaining threads up to the light, then watches mournfully as threads of both conviction and hope perish in the wind.
The structure models the broken and disjointed thoughts of Setsuko as she wastes away in an air raid shelter in a firebombed Yokohama at the war's end. By the end I felt satisfied, but for the bulk of the book, I was left with a yearning for a narrative.
The other side of the coin can often carry the same lustre, so flip it over.
The structure models the broken and disjointed thoughts of Setsuko as she wastes away in an air raid shelter in a firebombed Yokohama at the war's end. By the end I felt satisfied, but for the bulk of the book, I was left with a yearning for a narrative.
The other side of the coin can often carry the same lustre, so flip it over.
October 7, 2015
I like the way the horrors of the American bombing spree are shown in the novel. I also like how it gives space to Japanese voices who opposed the war and for this very reason were repressed by the imperial state. The book offers an excellent account on how the Japanese ideological apparatus worked to impart chauvinist patriotism and fascist ethos among its population to support imperialist adventures abroad.
February 28, 2014
Good book that demonstrates the nationalism taught and ingrained into young Japanese school children. Provides a narrative of a character against the war as well. Insightful into the often forgot fire bombings of Japan during WWII by America that were devastating killing thousands. Great commentary on war and it's questions.
February 27, 2009
Fantastically heartbreaking.
August 8, 2012
(This is a fictional work.) A young Japanese girl's account of the end of WW2. Upsetting but very good.
December 23, 2015
Quite an interesting narrative structure.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews