This chapter critiques how unverified stories were adopted and exaggerated without field research or testimony. It examines how imaginative hostility replaced factual inquiry, transforming fiction into an accusatory narrative aligned with the political climate of the time.

2016-04-02
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Ōe neither visited the site, nor verified the truth of the story, nor spoke with any of the people involved, yet he embraced this fabrication and wrote Okinawa Notes.
Had he merely copied it, he might have excused himself by saying, “I plagiarized another person’s work. I thought it was acceptable since reporters at Asahi Shimbun do the same.”
However, with poor imagination and limited vocabulary, he expanded the original story and portrayed the two commanders and the Japanese military with relentless hostility.
He denounced the two commanders as “butchers,” as he always did, likening the Japanese military to Hitler.
He went so far as to write that Captain Akamatsu and others were the same as Eichmann, who directed the Holocaust, and that they should be abducted like Eichmann, tried in an Okinawan court, and executed.
He published this in 1970.
It was the year of the 1970 security treaty protests.
He possessed a certain cunning in quickly conforming to the spirit of the times.
Why did he not apply even one-tenth of that cleverness to his own writing?
To be continued.