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Paper short abstract:

Using Ōe's own reflections on the seductive power of ultranationalism as a springboard, the paper examines the formal structure of A Political Youth dies in relation to the central status given to the postwar emperor system in Ōe's fictional worlds.

Paper long abstract:

In the last month of the last year of the 20th century, the author Inoue Hisashi and I invited Ōe Kenzaburō to participate in the series Postwar Literary History: Roundtable Discussions sponsored by the journal Subaru, and had the opportunity to discuss his life's work with him at length.

At one point during the discussion, Ōe declared, "I'm the type of human being who could easily be dragged in to ultranationalism; it has a strong attraction for me," and "I have always tried to keep it pent up in my unconscious." The novella Seventeen, and especially its second part, A Political Youth Dies---in which the protagonist is modeled after Yamauchi Otoya, who assassinated Socialist Party Chairman Asanuma Inejirō in 1960---"was a work that touched on the most dangerous part of my own mind," he said. He then pointed out that the novel Changeling (Torikaeko), published on the very day of our roundtable discussion, was "a work that dealt with ultranationalism as irony."

These words of Mr. Ōe's came as a shock, and prompted me to write a series of critical essays examining his major works in relation to the topic of ultranationalism, first serialized in the journal Gunzō and then published as The Novel and Historical Consciousness in June, 2002. In the process of writing these essays, I became aware of the central position occupied by the Shōwa Emperor's "Rescript Ending the War" in the postwar Japanese society depicted in Ōe's fictional world. This insight became the basis for yet another book, The Jewel Voice Broadcast

(Gyokuon Hōsō, 2003).

In this paper, I hope to shed light on the relation between the postwar emperor system and the structure of A Political Youth Dies, a text demonstrating the dynamic force of Ōe Kenzaburō's literature for the 21st century.