Postwar Japan

A man tells how, as a child, he learned to wear a mask of cheerfulness in order to resemble other people. Japanese literature after 1945 works on that crack: an occupied country, values overturned, families declassed, as in Dazai's Setting Sun, where a ruined aristocracy comes apart. Mishima builds his confession behind a mask, Abe Kōbō pushes narrative towards parable, Kawabata and Tanizaki explore late desire and the memory of older forms. Two Nobel prizes came from this generation, and several of its authors took their own lives.

works 5

• NovelThe Setting Sun斜陽Osamu Dazai · 1947A novel from 1947 about a noble family brought down in the world after the defeat, whose daughter looks for a reason to go on.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelConfessions of a Mask仮面の告白Yukio Mishima · 1949A novel from 1949 in which a narrator looks back on his childhood, his desires and the learning of concealment.Literature
• NovelThe Key鍵Jun'ichirō Tanizaki · 1956A 1956 novel made of the private diaries of a husband and his wife, each writing to be read by the other.Literature
• NovelHouse of the Sleeping Beauties眠れる美女Yasunari Kawabata · 1961A 1961 story about a discreet house where very old men pay to spend the night beside sleeping young women whom they must not wake.Literature
• NovelThe Woman in the Dunes砂の女Kobo Abe · 1962A novel of 1962 in which a man trapped in the dunes must learn to live with the sand.Literature