"Written with precise skill and beautifully controlled power. The translation by Ivan Morris is outstanding." —The New York Times**Winner of the 1952 Yomiuri Prize**This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Fires on the Plain is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this broader disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society, one by one, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast.Nearly losing the will to survive, he hears of a port still in Japanese hands and struggles to walk through the American lines. Unfazed by danger, he welcomes the prospect of dying, but first, he loses his hope, and then his sanity. Lost among his hallucinations, Tamura comes to fancy himself an angel enjoined by God to eat no living thing—but even angels fall.Tamura is never less than human, even when driven to the ultimate sin against humanity. Shocking as the outward events are, the greatness of the novel lies in its uplifting vision during a time of crushing horror. As relevant today as when it was originally published, Fires on the Plain will strike a chord with anyone who has lived through the horrors of war.

Fires on the Plain

Ooka, Shohei

Doka, Shohei

Reference

Praeger

"I do not know whether I dozed off or passed out, but the nextthing I remember is gradually becoming aware of a blunt objectstriking my body over and over. Just as I realized it was a bootkicking me in the side, I felt my arm being grabbed roughly, and Ireturned to full consciousness. "One GI had hold of my right arm, and another had his rifle pointedat me, nearly touching me. "'Don't move. We're taking you prisoner,' the one with the riflesaid." On January 25, 1945, Private Ooka Shohei of the Japanese ImperialArmy was captured by American forces in the Philippines. Near deathfrom starvation and acute malaria, he was nursed back to health byhis captors and shipped off to a POW camp. Taken Captive is hispowerful and poignant account of life as a prisoner of war. Longregarded as a literary classic in Japan, this extraordinary memoiris appearing in English for the first time. There are no epic battles or grand scale heroics. This is anintimate, gripping, and ultimately enlightening true story of asophisticated, middle-aged scholar thrown into a primitive strugglefor survival. It is filled with moments of sublimeordinariness--prisoners passing time by playing "20 Questions"--andheartstopping encounters--a lone soldier decides whether or not toshoot an unsuspecting enemy soldier. The harsh conditions, the daily routines that occupy a prisoner'stime, and above all, the psychological struggles and behavioralquirks of captives forced to live in close confinement are conveyedwith devastating simplicity and candor. Throughout, the authorconstantly probes his own conscience, questioning motivations anddecisions. What emerges is a multileveled portrait of an individualdetermined to retain his humanity in an uncivilizedenvironment. In Taken Captive, Ooka Shohei provides much more than anunprecedented look at the POW experience from a Japanese point ofview. His stirring account offers a penetrating exploration ofJapanese society, and its values, as embodied by the microcosm ofhis fellow POWs. Recalling his wartime experiences, Ooka Shohei hascreated a brilliant work of rare honesty, insight, and emotionalsubtlety.

Taken Captive: A Japanese POW's Story

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

wiley

"Written with precise skill and beautifully controlled power. The translation by Ivan Morris is outstanding." —The New York Times **Winner of the 1952 Yomiuri Prize** This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Fires on the Plain is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this broader disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society, one by one, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast. Nearly losing the will to survive, he hears of a port still in Japanese hands and struggles to walk through the American lines. Unfazed by danger, he welcomes the prospect of dying, but first, he loses his hope, and then his sanity. Lost among his hallucinations, Tamura comes to fancy himself an angel enjoined by God to eat no living thing—but even angels fall. Tamura is never less than human, even when driven to the ultimate sin against humanity. Shocking as the outward events are, the greatness of the novel lies in its uplifting vision during a time of crushing horror. As relevant today as when it was originally published, Fires on the Plain will strike a chord with anyone who has lived through the horrors of war.

Fires on the Plain (Tuttle Classics)

Tuttle+publishing

Language Notes Text: English (translation) Original Language: Japanese From Publishers Weekly In its first English translation, Shohei's 1961 novel depicts the atmosphere and social mores of Tokyo's decadent Ginza District of the 1950s through the haunting story of an aging nightclub courtesan. At 38, Yoko Adachi abruptly ends a three-year romantic relationship with a married man without insisting on the maintenance or "lump sum" customarily bestowed upon discarded mistresses and returns to her former job as bar hostess, though she knows that time is "unceremoniously laying waste to her." The Ginza is portrayed as a hard world, where men and women use each other, the bar hostesses trying to turn casual sexual partners into patrons who will set them up in business or support them indefinitely. Calculating enough to begin cultivating such profitable relationships, Yoko has never become as shrewd or ruthless as the younger madams Junko and Ayako, who run the bars in which she works. Compared to them, Yoko seems naive; she self-destructively angers all her lovers and sends them packing, distrusting both love relationships and those based on desire and money. The only man she trusts, seeing him as a father figure, is impoverished Professor Takashima, who actually cares little for Yoko and eventually destroys her last hope for financial security. Despite the dry irony of Shohei's prose, there is great pathos in this story of the little bar hostess whose circumstances overwhelm her. This edition includes an informative introduction by the translator and an enlightening 1972 postscript by the author. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Shade of Blossoms (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Literature & Fiction

Washburn, Dennis C.

Genre Fiction

Univ of Michigan Center for

The Shade of Blossoms (Volume 22) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Literary

U of M Center For Japanese Studies

A Wife in Musashino, published in Japanese in 1950, was a major critical and commercial success, and was quickly adapted to the screen by the director Mizoguchi Kenji in 1951. Composed simultaneously with portions of Ooka's great war novel, Fires on the Plain, A Wife in Musashino recounts the story of the ill-fated love between a young demobilized soldier, Tsutomu, and his married cousin, Michiko. The impact on Ooka of French writers such as Stendhal and Radiguet is apparent not only in his finely detailed observations of human emotions, but also in his trenchant critique of social customs and conventions. The novel's depiction of the motivations and circumstances of its characters and its subtle portrait of class conflict and family tensions bring the tumultuous Japanese postwar period to life, revealing with rich insight the impact of the war on Japanese society and on individual lives.

A Wife in Musashino (Volume 51) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan

In the Philippine island of Leyte, towards the very end of World War II, the Japanese army disintegrates as it is accosted by the advancement of American troops. Japanese soldier Tamura, hungry and sick, is forced to leave the hospital and wander through the jungle, the same one through which his brothers in arms also wander. Having broken all ties to society and turned into a pariah, Tamara will have to face himself in a place where all that’s left is to survive and where murder and cannibalism are commonplace. En la isla filipina de Leyte, a punto de finalizar la segunda guerra mundial, el ejército japonés se desintegra hostigado por el avance de las tropas estadounidenses. El soldado japonés Tamura, enfermo y hambriento, se ve obligado a abandonar el hospital y a deambular por la selva, por la que también vagan otros compañeros de armas. Quebrado todo vínculo con la sociedad y convertido en un paria, Tamura se verá enfrentado a sí mismo en un lugar donde sólo cabe sobrevivir y donde el asesinato y el canibalismo simplemente suceden.

Hogueras en la llanura (Spanish Edition)

Libros del Asteroide

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ooka, Shohei. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ooka, Shohei