A detailed critique of Kenzaburō Ōe’s Okinawa Notes, revealing that the Tokashiki Island commander tried to prevent mass suicide. The essay also exposes the fabricated origins of The Devil’s Gluttony, the entanglement of newspapers and publishers, and the closed discourse shaping Japan’s postwar historical narrative.

The following is from the serialized column by Masayuki Takayama published in the subscription-only monthly magazine Themis, which arrived at my home today.
It is no exaggeration to say that I subscribe to this monthly magazine solely to read his column.
This essay also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It also proves that he is the person most deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Peace Prize.
Not only the Japanese people but readers around the world must read it.

The Asahi Shimbun fawns over Kenzaburō Ōe and closes its eyes to “facts.”
It irresponsibly praises false works such as Okinawa Notes and The Devil’s Gluttony, whose verbose writing would ordinarily be rejected.

Having had his father and brother killed by King Ping of Chu, Wu Zixu fled to the neighboring state of Wu and served King Helü.
When the reign changed to King Fuchai, he proposed a plan to defeat Chu, his hated enemy.
Chu was defeated, but King Ping had already died.
What would the Japanese do?
The tension would drain from their shoulders; their eagerness would fade; and they might chuckle at why they had been so obsessed with such a thing.
But the Chinese are different.
Wu Zixu dug up King Ping’s tomb, dragged out the corpse, and whipped it.
In Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian, it is written: “He whipped the corpse 300 times, and only then did he stop.”
That is the origin of the phrase “to whip the dead,” meaning he finally felt satisfied after lashing the corpse 300 times.
In Japan, doing such a thing would make people recoil.
Even a villain becomes a Buddha once he is dead.
There is a general sense of “It’s enough already.”
But in the recent booklet Kokutai Bunka, in the column “New Inconvenient Japanese,” it was written, “There are those for whom it cannot simply end that way.”
The author is Toshiharu Ōno.
A former colleague from the Sankei Shimbun’s social affairs department, eccentric but full of knowledge and capable of soft, enjoyable prose.
He writes, “I do not enjoy whipping the dead, but I must say one word about this man, Kenzaburō Ōe.”
Because when Ōe died, “television and newspapers across Japan, including even Sankei, mourned him and published articles and biographies lauding his achievements.”
If left as is, it would seem as if his crimes were forgiven or even endorsed.
That was intolerable.
The truth is, I wanted to write the same thing but had been putting it off.
So I want to add one remark in support of this column.
Ōe is said to be a literary figure.
I also work with words and write sentences.
As an editor, I have reviewed others’ manuscripts.
Reading Ōe’s writing with that eye, it is verbose and at times even incomprehensible.
Ordinarily, it would be rejected.
If edited, 100 lines would become 20.
Yet somehow he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for that.
That too is undoubtedly a mistake.
That prize has quite a number of mistakes.
For example, it bypassed Hantaro Nagaoka, who proposed the Saturnian model of the atom, and awarded the Nobel Prize to the British physicist J.J. Thomson, who proposed the plum-pudding model—protons like bread dotted with electrons.
Or when the United States, disliking Japan’s nuclear armament, seized upon Eisaku Satō’s “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” and hurried to award him the Peace Prize.

The commander desperately tried to stop the suicides.
Ōe’s writing is unworthy of evaluation by any standard.
It is better seen as an award granted for political reasons—as an anti-Japanese ideologue.
If one disagrees, one should read Kazuo Ishiguro.
Even in translation, his writing is simple, clear, and—like Never Let Me Go—questions the very roots of human dignity with fresh sensitivity.
It is worlds apart from Ōe’s.
Then there is the stench of postwar democracy.
At a pro-constitution assembly, Ōe repeatedly referred to Prime Minister Abe without honorifics, as former Sankei editorial director Masato Inui wrote in astonishment.
A literary figure values words.
Even gentle words can pierce the lungs.
If one can express ideas only through abuse, one is no different from Jirō Yamaguchi.
And there is another matter—Okinawa Notes, which the Asahi Shimbun lavishly praised in its biography of Ōe.
Ōe wrote that the local commander on Tokashiki Island “ordered the islanders to commit mass suicide so as not to burden the Imperial Army and to reduce the number of mouths to feed.”
Ayako Sono had doubts and investigated.
She discovered the truth: the local commander had desperately tried to stop the suicides, and after the war, learning that families would receive survivor pensions if the suicides were deemed to have been ordered by the military, “sacrificed his own honor and allowed it to be said that he had issued the suicide order.”
Sono was surely deeply angered by Ōe’s irresponsible writing.
Yet Ōe showed no reaction, like water off a frog’s back.
He did not correct it.
Iwanami did not withdraw it from print.
Even when the commander’s bereaved family sued in court, the verdict was Ōe’s acquittal.
Ōe, emboldened, continued writing from on high: “Facts don’t matter; the Japanese military is evil, the Japanese government is evil.”
Ōno adds, “Because he is a Nobel laureate, no one criticizes him. People accept it as truth.”
“And does this man even have a conscience?”
The newspapers are included among “no one criticizes him.”
Reporters also ignored Ayako Sono.
There are many intellectuals in society.
None followed in Sono’s footsteps.
There is another reason for this.
Writers publish in newspapers and magazines.
But that world has strange entanglements.
For example, Iwanami and Kōdansha profit by having Ōe write for them.
Publications affiliated with publishers who sell Ōe will never carry criticism of him.
Newspapers that flatter Ōe also refuse to publish such evaluations.
A kind of closed linguistic space firmly exists.

The source was a Communist Party member’s fabrication.
Soon after Ōe died, the writer Seichō Morimura died.
He became famous as a mystery novelist, but once people become popular, they tend to transform into so-called social novelists.
So he wrote The Devil’s Gluttony about Unit 731.
His source was Shimozato, a Communist Party member.
The original story came from falsehoods fabricated by Communist China.
At the time, the Sankei Shimbun denounced it, but other newspapers remained silent.
This time, I expected the Asahi Shimbun to correct that mistake in its obituary of Morimura, but instead it used The Devil’s Gluttony in its headline, as if the Unit 731 atrocities were factual.
Kantarō Ogura, the model for Toyoko Yamazaki’s The Unfailing Sun, was a Japanese Communist Party agent who obstructed the reconstruction of Japan’s aviation industry.
This story, too, was buried by publisher networks.
Humans make mistakes.
I hear that Morimura regretted his.
But Ōe and Yamazaki are intentional offenders.
Even matters suppressed for the convenience of newspapers and publishers should at least be corrected when the coffin lid closes.
Otherwise, false writings like Okinawa Notes will remain as they are.