By comparing two works on the same subject, this chapter contrasts rigorous field research and testimony with unverified narrative expansion. It highlights how failure to correct falsehoods exposes intellectual arrogance rather than moral courage.

2016-04-02
Ōe offered a “defense” in an Asahi Shimbun column.
His arrogance becomes clear when one compares his work with The Background of a Certain Myth by Ayako Sono, which deals with the same subject.
Ms. Sono visited the sites, spoke with those involved, and examined extensive materials, publishing her book three years after Ōe’s Okinawa Notes.
Her account includes testimony that Captain Yoshitsugu Akamatsu—whom Ōe denounced as a “butcher”—attempted to persuade residents to refrain from mass suicide.
It also records that after the war, islanders asked Akamatsu to claim he had issued a suicide order so they could receive survivors’ pensions, and that he complied out of goodwill.
The case of the alleged “suicide order by Captain Hiroshi Umezawa” on Zamami Island is the same.
Hatsue Miyagi revealed that she committed perjury after being instructed by island elders to tell officials that Captain Umezawa had ordered suicide, so that survivors’ pensions could be obtained.
If Kenzaburō Ōe possessed a conscience, he would have immediately withdrawn this book from publication.
Yet even after fifty printings, he has not corrected these falsehoods.
However, his arrogance began to collapse in the face of lawsuits brought by those connected to the two commanders.
In textbook authorization by the Ministry of Education, the false claim of “mass suicide ordered by the military,” which had been included in deference to a Nobel laureate’s words, was finally removed.
This development suggests Ōe’s impending defeat in court.
Still, Ōe shows no remorse.
In an Asahi Shimbun column dated April 17, he brazenly wrote that he had lacked the courage to question islanders who had survived in suffering, as his reason for not conducting on-site interviews.
In reality, “the islanders” fabricated lies to exploit sympathy and obtain survivors’ pensions.
At the outset, the claim was simply that the horrors of war in Okinawa were severe, and that such exaggerations should be overlooked.
To be continued.