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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Furuyama Komao's novella, Pureō yuiito no yoake (1970), based on his experiences as a former soldier detained on suspicion of war crimes in Saigon Prison, and an earlier version from 1949, to consider the stakes of (re)writing Japan's imperial past and one's role therein.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the novella, Pureō yuiito no yoake (Daybreak over Préau huit, 1970) by Furuyama Komao (1920-2002), which centres on a group of Japanese soldiers interned in Saigon in 1945 (in French, préau refers to a prison courtyard; huit, to the number eight). Drawing on Furuyama’s experiences as a former soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army detained on suspicion of war crimes, and weaving actual events into its narrative, Préau huit presents a genuinely rare literary perspective onto a specific historical moment. Préau also received the Akutagawa Prize, with the writer and judge Ōoka Shōhei remarking that it far surpassed his own acclaimed record of captivity in the Philippines, Furyoki (1948).

More significantly, in Préau Furuyama appears to have revised his earlier, more literal account, Hadaka no mure (The naked herd), which was published one year after Furyoki in 1949. As a text that sits between literature and reportage, Hadaka garnered little critical attention and is frequently omitted from the timelines chronicling Furuyama’s biography in his key publications. This paper departs from this coincidence between Préau’s success at the height of the Vietnam War and Furuyama’s apparent revision of his personal past to consider the complexities of writing and rewriting history, especially amid contested stakes and legacies in the present. Connecting the liminality of Furuyama’s prison setting to the position of these works between historical fact and creative fiction, this paper considers the value that such lesser-seen narratives of imperial encounters carry within the landscape of Japan’s post-war literature.