午夜剧场

When I sent this book to a close friend from my university days, I received a letter of thanks.

In it, he wrote something to the effect of, "I was deeply moved that you wrote a book at this age discussing the author you talked about most when we were young."

I personally don't think I discussed literature much during my student days. Having it pointed out to me, I was filled with deep emotion, wondering if that was indeed the case.

It began in high school when I read novels such as "Fires on the Plain" and "Lady Musashino," as well as the rare personal account "Taken Captive." More than anything, I was drawn to the precise yet supple style, which is uncommon in modern and contemporary Japanese literature.

Perhaps because of that magnificent prose, Ooka's works—including the aforementioned titles as well as "The Shade of Blossoms" and "The Incident"—are now treated as "Showa classics." Ironically, by being elevated to the status of classics, people have almost stopped reading them.

However, for me, they remain "contemporary" literature to this day.

During my time working at a publishing house, I began reading Ooka's works as they were published, and they always represented the cutting edge of literature. From biographies of Taro Tominaga and Chuya Nakahara to experimental autobiographies, essays expressing dissatisfaction with contemporary Japanese literature, and the fierce controversies that followed, Shohei Ooka developed a truly vibrant and diverse body of work.

While I felt I could never keep up with the breadth of his work, the reason I never stopped following it was that Ooka's work always contained themes that modern Japanese literature must inherit.

For example, in the essay collection "Common Sense Literary Theory" (published in 1962), he discusses the flood of entertainment-oriented novels in Japan. Entering the 2000s, this has taken on an even more complex form and has become a major issue facing contemporary literature itself.

Furthermore, in "The End of Showa," published a year after Ooka's death, he captures the new form of that entertainment and discusses a different kind of exploration than before.

In other words, for me, "The Era of Shohei Ooka" has by no means ended.

Yutaka Yukawa

Kawade Shobo Shinsha

312 pages, 2,300 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time this magazine was published.