The Man Who Came Back Alive: an Ordinary Japanese Soldier's World War Ii and Postwar Life History
About This Novel
The first history of Japanese life before and after World War II from a common people's perspective, recreating the lives and mental state of ordinary Japanese people. The protagonist in the book, Xiao Xiong Kenji (the author's father), was born in 1925. He was drafted and sent to Northeast China at the age of nineteen. He was later detained by the Soviet Union in a prisoner of war camp and worked in the harsh Siberia for three years. After returning to Japan alive, Kenji contracted tuberculosis, which was considered a terminal disease at the time, while constantly changing jobs. From the age of twenty-five to thirty, the most disappointing period of his life was spent alone in a sanatorium. Kenji, who lost half of his lungs, returned to society at the "old age" of thirty. Fortunately, he caught up with Japan's rapid economic growth and was able to climb from the "lower class of the lower class" to the "middle class of the lower class." After being promoted to a senior citizen, he even became a plaintiff together with Wu Xionggen, a "former Korean Japanese soldier" in Yanbian, China, and initiated a post-war lawsuit against the Japanese government for compensation. The author recorded the life trajectory of his father as an ordinary Japanese soldier with a plain narrative and a broad perspective, and at the same time incorporated the economic, policy, legal and other conditions of the same period, forming a "living history of the twentieth century." The first Japanese to stand on the plaintiff's bench with the Chinese to sue the Japanese government, telling the true experience of the "unrecorded majority".
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What Readers Think
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Official(1)Scraped 1mo ago
Tell me your thoughts. I always feel that the life of a person who has experienced war and labor camp life should be impassioned, and a lot of personal emotions and anger should be added to the narrative. After reading it, Kenji's narration of all this is indeed so plain and real. For people who have not experienced that era, it will feel magnificent, but people who have really experienced it will probably feel the same as Kenji, that they have lived a life that is very ordinary.
Rating
Community(0)
Official(1)Scraped 1mo ago
Tell me your thoughts. I always feel that the life of a person who has experienced war and labor camp life should be impassioned, and a lot of personal emotions and anger should be added to the narrative. After reading it, Kenji's narration of all this is indeed so plain and real. For people who have not experienced that era, it will feel magnificent, but people who have really experienced it will probably feel the same as Kenji, that they have lived a life that is very ordinary.
