WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.299 OK, so imagine this, just for a second. You've 00:00:02.299 --> 00:00:05.200 reached the very, very top of your game, the 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.039 absolute summit of your career. The mountaintop. 00:00:08.039 --> 00:00:10.480 The mountaintop. Exactly. You've just been awarded 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:13.000 the Nobel Prize. It's not just a professional 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:15.000 thing, right? The whole world is suddenly looking 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.359 at you. They're applauding. Cameras are flashing 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:19.600 everywhere. Your phone is just ringing off the 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:23.100 hook. Total global validation. Right. And then 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:27.120 in the middle of all that noise, your own government. 00:00:27.579 --> 00:00:30.460 The leadership of your own country steps forward. 00:00:30.719 --> 00:00:33.259 It's the homecoming hero moment, the thing everyone 00:00:33.259 --> 00:00:36.560 dreams of. Yes. And the government says, we are 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:39.119 so, so proud. We want to give you the order of 00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:41.000 culture. And we should be clear, this is not 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.320 just some plaque you hang on the wall. No, this 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:46.219 is the highest honor for an artist in Japan. 00:00:46.380 --> 00:00:48.859 It's a huge deal. And it's bestowed personally 00:00:48.859 --> 00:00:51.850 by the emperor. For almost anyone else, this 00:00:51.850 --> 00:00:54.530 is the storybook ending. It's the dream scenario. 00:00:54.590 --> 00:00:57.350 You take the medal, you bow, you cement your 00:00:57.350 --> 00:00:59.810 legacy as, you know, a national treasure. Right. 00:00:59.869 --> 00:01:02.770 And then imagine looking at that offer, looking 00:01:02.770 --> 00:01:05.450 at the government, and in a way looking the emperor 00:01:05.450 --> 00:01:09.349 right in the eye and just saying no. And it's 00:01:09.349 --> 00:01:11.629 not a polite no either, is it? It's not an, oh, 00:01:11.650 --> 00:01:14.109 I'm busy that day kind of no. Not at all. We're 00:01:14.109 --> 00:01:16.420 talking about a refusal that... I mean, it must 00:01:16.420 --> 00:01:18.260 have struck in the very heart of the Japanese 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:20.340 identity at the time. It was a political statement 00:01:20.340 --> 00:01:23.480 of the highest order. His quote was, I do not 00:01:23.480 --> 00:01:26.620 recognize any authority, any value higher than 00:01:26.620 --> 00:01:29.319 democracy. That was the line he drew in the sand. 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:32.019 And the man who drew that line is the subject 00:01:32.019 --> 00:01:34.359 of our deep dive today. We're talking about Kenzo 00:01:34.359 --> 00:01:37.939 Bursche. A true giant, a literary titan. And 00:01:37.939 --> 00:01:39.760 he just passed away recently in March of 2023. 00:01:40.299 --> 00:01:42.700 And his death really felt... I don't know, like 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:45.519 the closing of a major chapter in world literature. 00:01:45.879 --> 00:01:48.040 But here's the thing that gets me. When you hear 00:01:48.040 --> 00:01:50.299 Nobel Prize winner, you tend to picture someone 00:01:50.299 --> 00:01:53.379 a bit detached, right? Yeah, maybe a little stuffy. 00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:56.319 Academic? Exactly. Someone writing in a dusty 00:01:56.319 --> 00:01:59.359 library, completely removed from the world. His 00:01:59.359 --> 00:02:02.840 life was just absolute chaos. It was messy. It 00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:05.299 was packed with conflict. He was a figure of 00:02:05.299 --> 00:02:08.479 just massive contradiction. And alongside that 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:11.500 massive conviction, he somehow managed to offend 00:02:11.949 --> 00:02:13.990 almost everyone at some point in his career. 00:02:14.150 --> 00:02:17.969 The right wing, they absolutely hated him. And 00:02:17.969 --> 00:02:19.629 the traditionalists. The traditionalists didn't 00:02:19.629 --> 00:02:22.069 know what on earth to do with him. So that's 00:02:22.069 --> 00:02:23.469 our mission for this deep dive. We're not just 00:02:23.469 --> 00:02:25.409 going to, you know, read off his bibliography. 00:02:25.610 --> 00:02:29.069 We want to figure out how a boy from a tiny village 00:02:29.069 --> 00:02:31.729 in the woods, I mean, a place that sounds like 00:02:31.729 --> 00:02:34.849 it's straight out of folklore. How did he become 00:02:34.849 --> 00:02:37.990 the moral conscience of post -war Japan? It's 00:02:37.990 --> 00:02:40.189 a journey that really requires us to understand 00:02:40.189 --> 00:02:43.550 a kind of collision. On one side, you have the 00:02:43.550 --> 00:02:46.509 village, the myths, the forest, the deep ancient 00:02:46.509 --> 00:02:48.629 history. And on the other? The other side is 00:02:48.629 --> 00:02:51.110 the modern world. It's existentialism. It's nuclear 00:02:51.110 --> 00:02:53.990 politics. It's the big overwhelming city. And 00:02:53.990 --> 00:02:56.389 he's the spark that happens when those two things 00:02:56.389 --> 00:02:58.250 just crash right into each other. I've got a 00:02:58.250 --> 00:03:00.550 whole stack of sources here. Biographical records, 00:03:00.849 --> 00:03:03.569 literary analysis, you know, details on his political 00:03:03.569 --> 00:03:06.050 activism. And the more I look at it, the more 00:03:06.050 --> 00:03:08.310 I see a story that's fundamentally about betrayal. 00:03:09.229 --> 00:03:12.250 Betrayal is absolutely the key. Betrayal by teachers, 00:03:12.449 --> 00:03:14.849 betrayal by the government, and how this one 00:03:14.849 --> 00:03:17.990 man decided to fight back with the only weapon 00:03:17.990 --> 00:03:21.169 he really had, his pen. And if you pull on that 00:03:21.169 --> 00:03:24.150 one thread, that theme of betrayal, the whole 00:03:24.150 --> 00:03:27.409 tapestry of his life and his work starts to make 00:03:27.409 --> 00:03:29.349 perfect sense. Okay, so let's go back to the 00:03:29.349 --> 00:03:31.650 source then. Let's go to the forest because it 00:03:31.650 --> 00:03:34.150 seems like everything with Shay one way or another 00:03:34.150 --> 00:03:36.550 circles right back to this village. It really 00:03:36.550 --> 00:03:40.550 does. So Shay was born in 1935. The village was 00:03:40.550 --> 00:03:43.150 called Jess. Now, today it's part of a larger 00:03:43.150 --> 00:03:46.270 town, Uchiko, in the Ihami Prefecture, but we 00:03:46.270 --> 00:03:48.349 need to kind of strip away the modern map for 00:03:48.349 --> 00:03:51.270 a second. Get back to the 1930s. Exactly. Back 00:03:51.270 --> 00:03:54.030 then, this was deep, deep isolation. Shikoku 00:03:54.030 --> 00:03:56.389 is one of the main islands of Japan, but this 00:03:56.389 --> 00:03:58.330 village was tucked away in these valleys, surrounded 00:03:58.330 --> 00:04:01.169 by these dense, dark forests. It sounds almost 00:04:01.169 --> 00:04:03.569 like a setting for a fairy tale, or maybe a horror 00:04:03.569 --> 00:04:06.189 movie. It could be both, honestly. And in many 00:04:06.189 --> 00:04:09.030 ways, it was like a fairy tale. But that isolation 00:04:09.030 --> 00:04:12.250 is so important psychologically. When you are 00:04:12.250 --> 00:04:15.550 that deep in the woods, the center, and by that 00:04:15.550 --> 00:04:18.089 I mean Tokyo, the government, the emperor, it 00:04:18.089 --> 00:04:21.430 all feels very, very far away. And his education 00:04:21.430 --> 00:04:24.230 there. It wasn't exactly standard, was it? I 00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:26.209 was reading about this idea of his two teachers. 00:04:26.430 --> 00:04:29.529 Yes, this is a crucial framework for understanding 00:04:29.529 --> 00:04:33.149 his entire childhood. He was raised by two completely 00:04:33.149 --> 00:04:36.269 competing influences, two teachers. The first 00:04:36.269 --> 00:04:38.449 teacher was his grandmother. The storyteller. 00:04:38.529 --> 00:04:40.290 The storyteller, yeah. But she wasn't just telling 00:04:40.290 --> 00:04:42.529 him bedtime stories to help him fall asleep. 00:04:42.589 --> 00:04:44.750 She was the keeper of the oral history of the 00:04:44.750 --> 00:04:47.269 entire region. She raised him on the myths and 00:04:47.269 --> 00:04:49.689 legends of the forest. But here's the really 00:04:49.689 --> 00:04:52.079 important part. She told him about the local 00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:54.639 uprisings. Uprisings. You mean like rebellions 00:04:54.639 --> 00:04:57.339 against the government. Exactly. Peasant uprisings. 00:04:57.459 --> 00:04:59.620 Stories of farmers fighting against the samurai 00:04:59.620 --> 00:05:01.920 clans or later on fighting against the Meiji 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:04.480 government. So she instilled in him this idea 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:06.579 from a very young age that the village was a 00:05:06.579 --> 00:05:09.040 place of resistance. So it wasn't just a place. 00:05:09.060 --> 00:05:11.959 It was an idea. It was an idea. The village had 00:05:11.959 --> 00:05:15.060 its own soul, its own rules, and it often stood 00:05:15.060 --> 00:05:17.300 in direct opposition to the power of the center. 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:20.649 She represented. The forest. OK, so that's teacher 00:05:20.649 --> 00:05:23.230 number one, the grandmother representing the 00:05:23.230 --> 00:05:24.970 forest and rebellion. So who is teacher number 00:05:24.970 --> 00:05:27.470 two? Teacher number two was the school system. 00:05:27.649 --> 00:05:29.589 And we have to remember the timeline here. He 00:05:29.589 --> 00:05:33.430 starts school in 1941. This is the absolute peak 00:05:33.430 --> 00:05:36.189 of Japanese militarism. World War Two is just 00:05:36.189 --> 00:05:38.910 ramping up into a frenzy. So school wasn't just 00:05:38.910 --> 00:05:41.509 school. It was an indoctrination camp. It was 00:05:41.509 --> 00:05:43.329 essentially that the curriculum wasn't just, 00:05:43.410 --> 00:05:46.290 you know, reading and math. It was loyalty in 00:05:46.290 --> 00:05:49.639 class. She was forced to pronounce his absolute 00:05:49.639 --> 00:05:53.560 unquestioning loyalty to Emperor Hirohito. And 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:55.480 they didn't just say the emperor is our leader, 00:05:55.560 --> 00:05:57.199 right? It was more than that. Oh, much more. 00:05:57.579 --> 00:05:59.819 They taught the children that the emperor was 00:05:59.819 --> 00:06:03.360 a god, an arhitogami, a living deity walking 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:05.480 the earth. I'm trying to imagine being, what, 00:06:05.500 --> 00:06:09.579 six or seven years old. You trust adults implicitly 00:06:09.579 --> 00:06:12.420 at that age. And every single adult in the school 00:06:12.420 --> 00:06:15.120 is telling you that the man in Tokyo is literally 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:19.019 divine. That has to wire your brain in a very 00:06:19.019 --> 00:06:21.480 specific way. It absolutely does. It creates 00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:23.899 a reality where your entire purpose in life is 00:06:23.899 --> 00:06:26.779 to serve that deity. The teachers would ask the 00:06:26.779 --> 00:06:28.779 kids, what would you do if the emperor commanded 00:06:28.779 --> 00:06:30.779 it? And the answer was? The answer they were 00:06:30.779 --> 00:06:34.000 taught was, I would die. I would cut open my 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.240 belly. That is unbelievably heavy stuff for a 00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:39.540 first grader. It's terrifying. But here's the 00:06:39.540 --> 00:06:41.740 thing. She bought into it completely. He was 00:06:41.740 --> 00:06:44.379 a patriotic boy. He believed the teachers. He 00:06:44.379 --> 00:06:47.079 believed the emperor was God. But then as the 00:06:47.079 --> 00:06:51.480 timeline moves forward into 1944 and 1945, reality 00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:53.500 starts to crack. And the first crack is personal. 00:06:53.899 --> 00:06:57.180 His father dies. Yes. In 1944. And there's just 00:06:57.180 --> 00:06:59.220 one detail about his father that I think is just 00:06:59.220 --> 00:07:01.199 really telling. He had a bark stripping business. 00:07:01.439 --> 00:07:03.480 Bark stripping. What for? For paper currency. 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:06.199 As the war dragged on, the Japanese economy was 00:07:06.199 --> 00:07:08.899 completely collapsing. Metal was scarce. So they 00:07:08.899 --> 00:07:11.139 were actually using tree bark to make money. 00:07:11.220 --> 00:07:14.420 It just grounds the family in this gritty, desperate 00:07:14.420 --> 00:07:17.949 material reality of the war. So. The patriarch 00:07:17.949 --> 00:07:21.129 of the family dies. And then a year later in 00:07:21.129 --> 00:07:24.949 1945, the ultimate patriarch falls. Japan surrenders. 00:07:25.029 --> 00:07:27.649 The defeat. And the emperor goes on the radio, 00:07:27.850 --> 00:07:30.310 the famous jewel voice broadcast. And suddenly 00:07:30.310 --> 00:07:34.699 the god has a voice. And he sounds. well he sounds 00:07:34.699 --> 00:07:36.819 like a human being he sounds weak and kind of 00:07:36.819 --> 00:07:39.600 reedy he's renouncing his divinity but for young 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:42.560 kinsabusha the real shock wasn't just that they 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:45.560 lost the war the shock was watching the adults 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:48.860 the teachers the teachers the exact same men 00:07:48.860 --> 00:07:51.939 who had you know beaten him for not bowing low 00:07:51.939 --> 00:07:53.980 enough to the emperor's portrait overnight and 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:55.800 i mean literally overnight they just pivoted 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:58.000 what did they do the americans arrived the occupation 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.660 began and suddenly these same teachers were standing 00:08:00.660 --> 00:08:03.379 in front of the class saying democracy is great 00:08:03.379 --> 00:08:06.060 we love democracy the americans are our friends 00:08:06.060 --> 00:08:09.180 wait so no apology no moment of hey kids sorry 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:11.000 we were wrong about that whole dying for a living 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:14.569 god thing nothing not a word Just a seamless, 00:08:14.790 --> 00:08:17.410 totally shameless switch. They just pretended 00:08:17.410 --> 00:08:19.610 the previous years hadn't happened. And for Shea, 00:08:19.610 --> 00:08:21.970 who is 10 years old, this was a massive foundational 00:08:21.970 --> 00:08:25.310 trauma. It's the realization that the people 00:08:25.310 --> 00:08:28.490 in charge aren't just wrong, they're liars. They're 00:08:28.490 --> 00:08:32.559 hollow. Precisely. He felt so deeply betrayed. 00:08:32.919 --> 00:08:35.460 He realized that authority figures would say 00:08:35.460 --> 00:08:37.539 whatever they needed to say to survive. They 00:08:37.539 --> 00:08:40.659 had no core beliefs. And that raw sense of betrayal 00:08:40.659 --> 00:08:43.480 became the engine for his entire literary career. 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:46.120 He decided right then and there that he would 00:08:46.120 --> 00:08:48.559 never, ever trust the state or the authority 00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:51.539 again. So you've got this disillusioned 10 -year 00:08:51.539 --> 00:08:54.659 -old kid in the woods. His dad is dead. The teachers 00:08:54.659 --> 00:08:56.940 are hypocrites. The emperor isn't a god. He needs 00:08:56.940 --> 00:08:59.360 a new compass, a new North Star. Where does he 00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:01.600 find it? He finds it in his mother, Krusecki. 00:09:01.659 --> 00:09:03.580 She really stepped in after his father died. 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:05.440 And she did something very specific and very 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:07.580 important. She bought him books. And not the 00:09:07.580 --> 00:09:09.120 propaganda books they were getting at school. 00:09:09.379 --> 00:09:10.960 No, not at all. She bought him The Wonderful 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:13.059 Adventures of Nils. And even more importantly, 00:09:13.240 --> 00:09:15.440 she bought him a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry 00:09:15.440 --> 00:09:19.340 Finn. Mark Twain. In a tiny village in Shikoku 00:09:19.340 --> 00:09:23.419 in the 1940s. It sounds so unlikely, doesn't 00:09:23.419 --> 00:09:25.159 it? But just think about Huckleberry Finn for 00:09:25.159 --> 00:09:28.820 a second. Why would that specific book resonate 00:09:28.820 --> 00:09:32.019 so deeply with him at that specific moment? Well, 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:34.429 Huck is a kid, right? And he's totally on the 00:09:34.429 --> 00:09:38.149 fringes of society. Huck is an outcast. He completely 00:09:38.149 --> 00:09:40.649 rejects the civilizing influence of the widow 00:09:40.649 --> 00:09:43.690 Douglas. He rejects the hypocrisy of a society 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:46.409 that supports slavery while claiming to be Christian. 00:09:46.590 --> 00:09:49.429 What does Huck do? He goes to the river. He goes 00:09:49.429 --> 00:09:51.909 to the wild to find his own morality. All right, 00:09:51.909 --> 00:09:53.870 then I'll go to hell. That's the famous line. 00:09:54.269 --> 00:09:56.710 When he decides to help Jim. Exactly. Huck chooses 00:09:56.710 --> 00:09:59.230 what society calls hell over the fake morality 00:09:59.230 --> 00:10:01.889 of the adults. And she read that and he saw himself. 00:10:02.149 --> 00:10:04.169 He saw the village in the woods as his Mississippi 00:10:04.169 --> 00:10:07.210 River. Huckleberry Finn became his Bible. It 00:10:07.210 --> 00:10:09.389 was a story about how to survive in a world of 00:10:09.389 --> 00:10:11.509 lying adults. So he's got his literary armor 00:10:11.509 --> 00:10:13.889 on now. He's armed with Mark Twain. But he doesn't 00:10:13.889 --> 00:10:15.470 stay in the village forever. He's obviously smart. 00:10:15.909 --> 00:10:18.710 He's brilliant. He excels at the local high school 00:10:18.710 --> 00:10:22.009 in Matsuyama and then at 18 he makes the big 00:10:22.009 --> 00:10:24.789 move. He leaves the forest and he goes to the 00:10:24.789 --> 00:10:27.629 ultimate symbol of the center. He goes to Tokyo. 00:10:27.870 --> 00:10:30.129 And he gets into the University of Tokyo. I mean 00:10:30.129 --> 00:10:32.629 we need to put this in context. That is the Harvard, 00:10:32.850 --> 00:10:35.769 the Oxford, the Yale of Japan all rolled into 00:10:35.769 --> 00:10:38.769 one. It is the elite factory. It's where the 00:10:38.769 --> 00:10:40.929 bureaucrats who run the country are made. But 00:10:40.929 --> 00:10:42.950 Shih doesn't go there to become a bureaucrat. 00:10:43.049 --> 00:10:46.230 He enrolls to study French literature. Why French? 00:10:46.389 --> 00:10:48.690 Why not, you know, classic Japanese literature? 00:10:49.029 --> 00:10:51.070 You really have to understand the mood of the 00:10:51.070 --> 00:10:53.710 Japanese intellectuals in the 1950s. There was 00:10:53.710 --> 00:10:55.850 this feeling that traditional Japanese culture 00:10:55.850 --> 00:10:58.490 in some way had led them into the abyss of the 00:10:58.490 --> 00:11:01.250 war. So they were looking outward. They were 00:11:01.250 --> 00:11:03.730 hungry for new frameworks, new ways to think 00:11:03.730 --> 00:11:05.710 about the human condition. So they looked to 00:11:05.710 --> 00:11:08.110 Europe for answers. Specifically, they looked 00:11:08.110 --> 00:11:12.279 to Jean -Paul Sartre. to existentialism. Okay, 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:14.279 let's unpack that for a second. Existentialism 00:11:14.279 --> 00:11:16.580 is one of those big words. What did it actually 00:11:16.580 --> 00:11:19.019 mean for a kid like Xie coming to where he came 00:11:19.019 --> 00:11:21.860 from? At its core, what Sartre was arguing was 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:25.320 that existence precedes essence. What that means 00:11:25.320 --> 00:11:27.740 is you aren't born with a preordained destiny. 00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:30.879 You aren't born a servant of the emperor. You're 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:33.500 born as a blank slate and you are radically responsible 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:36.440 for your own actions. You create your own meaning 00:11:36.440 --> 00:11:38.539 through the choices you make. That must have 00:11:38.539 --> 00:11:40.620 felt incredibly liberating for a generation that 00:11:40.620 --> 00:11:42.840 had been told their only destiny was to die for 00:11:42.840 --> 00:11:45.120 the state. It was like a blast of fresh air. 00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:48.519 It was oxygen. It was freedom. But she didn't 00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:50.299 just stop with Sartre. He studied under this 00:11:50.299 --> 00:11:53.240 amazing professor named Kazuo Watanabe, who was 00:11:53.240 --> 00:11:55.639 an expert on Francois Rabelais. Rabelais, the... 00:11:56.159 --> 00:11:58.659 What, 16th century French writer? The very same. 00:11:58.799 --> 00:12:01.000 The author of Gargantua and Pantagruel. We're 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:03.620 talking giants, fart jokes, gluttony, grotesque 00:12:03.620 --> 00:12:05.720 bodies. It's wild stuff. This seems like such 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:08.059 a weird mix. Sartre is all serious and depressed, 00:12:08.279 --> 00:12:11.659 and Rabelais is... He's just gross and funny. 00:12:11.759 --> 00:12:14.259 But for Shay, they fit together perfectly. Rabelais 00:12:14.259 --> 00:12:16.600 offered him something called grotesque realism. 00:12:17.200 --> 00:12:20.419 The idea that the body, the sweating, bleeding, 00:12:20.620 --> 00:12:23.419 defecating physical body is the ultimate reality. 00:12:23.700 --> 00:12:26.899 And that reality degrades power. Well, you can't 00:12:26.899 --> 00:12:29.600 be an aloof divine emperor if you're being described 00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:32.120 in Rabelaisian terms. It brings the high and 00:12:32.120 --> 00:12:35.220 mighty crashing down to earth. It's a great equalizer. 00:12:35.379 --> 00:12:37.659 So he's got this incredible toolkit now. He's 00:12:37.659 --> 00:12:40.019 got the folklore from his grandmother, the sense 00:12:40.019 --> 00:12:42.240 of betrayal from the war, the radical freedom 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:45.679 of existentialism from Sartre, and the grotesque 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:48.690 physical body from Rabelais. And he starts writing. 00:12:48.850 --> 00:12:50.950 And he just explodes onto the scene. He starts 00:12:50.950 --> 00:12:53.850 publishing in 1957 while he's still a student 00:12:53.850 --> 00:12:56.330 at Today. Talk about an overachiever. He writes 00:12:56.330 --> 00:12:58.289 a story called Lavish Are the Dead, which is 00:12:58.289 --> 00:13:02.169 set in occupied Tokyo. And then in 1958, he writes 00:13:02.169 --> 00:13:04.730 The Catch, which is sometimes translated as prize 00:13:04.730 --> 00:13:07.809 stock. And this one wins the Akutagawa Prize. 00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:11.090 That is the biggest, most prestigious prize for 00:13:11.090 --> 00:13:13.590 a new writer in Japan. So let's dive into The 00:13:13.590 --> 00:13:17.029 Catch. Because the plot sounds... Well, it sounds 00:13:17.029 --> 00:13:19.429 pretty intense. It is incredibly intense, and 00:13:19.429 --> 00:13:21.669 it takes us right back to the village. The story 00:13:21.669 --> 00:13:24.070 is set in a remote village during the war. A 00:13:24.070 --> 00:13:27.070 black American GI's plane is shot down, and he's 00:13:27.070 --> 00:13:29.450 captured by the villagers. So the enemy literally 00:13:29.450 --> 00:13:32.450 just falls out of the sky into their world. Exactly. 00:13:32.570 --> 00:13:34.889 But the villagers don't turn him over to the 00:13:34.889 --> 00:13:36.710 authorities right away. They keep him locked 00:13:36.710 --> 00:13:38.990 up in a cellar. And the whole story is told through 00:13:38.990 --> 00:13:41.590 the eyes of the village children. Okay, so how 00:13:41.590 --> 00:13:44.250 do the kids react to this enemy? Are they scared 00:13:44.250 --> 00:13:46.929 of him? That's the fascinating part. At first, 00:13:46.929 --> 00:13:49.909 he's this terrifying monster to them. But then, 00:13:49.970 --> 00:13:53.230 over time, he becomes something else entirely. 00:13:53.610 --> 00:13:56.710 They start to see him almost as a pet or a strange, 00:13:56.889 --> 00:14:00.279 powerful beast. They feed him. They watch him. 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:02.940 They start to form this weird, unspoken bond 00:14:02.940 --> 00:14:06.039 with him. He uses this concept he calls the child 00:14:06.039 --> 00:14:08.899 god. The child god? What's that? It's an archetype 00:14:08.899 --> 00:14:10.799 he uses. A figure that is somehow innocent and 00:14:10.799 --> 00:14:13.779 powerful, but also abandoned and trapped. The 00:14:13.779 --> 00:14:16.039 GI is outside of their society, just like the 00:14:16.039 --> 00:14:18.500 kids are. So there's this sense of shared isolation 00:14:18.500 --> 00:14:21.019 between them. But knowing Che, I have a feeling 00:14:21.019 --> 00:14:22.840 this doesn't end with them all becoming best 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:25.750 friends. No. It ends in betrayal. The adults 00:14:25.750 --> 00:14:28.149 intervene. The army comes to collect the catch. 00:14:28.350 --> 00:14:30.889 And in the chaos of it all, the adults kill the 00:14:30.889 --> 00:14:33.830 GI. The children witness the murder of this being 00:14:33.830 --> 00:14:35.850 they had bonded with. So it destroys their innocence. 00:14:36.330 --> 00:14:39.009 Completely. It's the 1945 trauma replayed in 00:14:39.009 --> 00:14:42.590 fiction. The adults once again. ruin everything. 00:14:42.889 --> 00:14:44.850 And he was also wrestling with the American occupation 00:14:44.850 --> 00:14:47.850 itself in these early works, right? I read about 00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:49.789 this theory of occupation he developed. He used 00:14:49.789 --> 00:14:53.090 a triad, X, Y, Z. It sounds like algebra, but 00:14:53.090 --> 00:14:54.970 it's actually his political theory. It is. It's 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:57.789 a very cynical, very sharp bit of analysis. He 00:14:57.789 --> 00:14:59.669 looked at the power dynamics he saw playing out 00:14:59.669 --> 00:15:01.610 in Tokyo, and he broke it down into three parts. 00:15:02.049 --> 00:15:04.470 Z is the foreigner, the big power, the American 00:15:04.470 --> 00:15:08.090 GI. Z holds all the cards. Okay, so Z is the 00:15:08.090 --> 00:15:10.549 conqueror. Right. X is the Japanese. person. 00:15:10.649 --> 00:15:13.529 But X is placed in this humiliating, inactive 00:15:13.529 --> 00:15:17.210 position. X fails to take initiative. X is passive. 00:15:17.450 --> 00:15:21.610 So X represents Japan's helplessness or maybe 00:15:21.610 --> 00:15:24.769 it's passivity. Yes. And then you have Y. Y is 00:15:24.769 --> 00:15:26.870 the third party. Y is the one who is sandwiched 00:15:26.870 --> 00:15:29.909 between them. Y is often an interpreter or very 00:15:29.909 --> 00:15:32.289 frequently in his stories, a prostitute, someone 00:15:32.289 --> 00:15:34.570 who facilitates the interaction between the conqueror 00:15:34.570 --> 00:15:36.549 and the conquered. And he used sexual metaphors 00:15:36.549 --> 00:15:38.940 to describe this power dynamic. Oh, explicitly. 00:15:39.240 --> 00:15:41.799 He really wanted to shock the Japanese public 00:15:41.799 --> 00:15:44.360 out of its complacency. He was criticizing their 00:15:44.360 --> 00:15:46.740 passivity. He was basically shouting, you are 00:15:46.740 --> 00:15:49.179 behaving like X. You are just accepting your 00:15:49.179 --> 00:15:51.340 humiliation. He was definitely earning that angry 00:15:51.340 --> 00:15:53.320 young man label at this point. He really was. 00:15:53.399 --> 00:15:55.480 He was just relentlessly poking the bruise of 00:15:55.480 --> 00:15:58.820 the national ego. But the real explosion, the 00:15:58.820 --> 00:16:01.039 one that actually put his life in physical danger, 00:16:01.159 --> 00:16:05.940 that came in 1961. With these two novellas, 17 00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:09.509 and... The death of a political youth. This is 00:16:09.509 --> 00:16:12.210 an absolutely pivotal moment. To understand the 00:16:12.210 --> 00:16:14.730 incredible risk he took, we have to look at what 00:16:14.730 --> 00:16:17.490 was happening in the real world in 1960. You're 00:16:17.490 --> 00:16:19.470 talking about the assassination of Asanuma. Yes. 00:16:19.950 --> 00:16:22.070 Inajiro Asanuma was the chairman of the Japan 00:16:22.070 --> 00:16:25.470 Socialist Party. In October of 1960, he was giving 00:16:25.470 --> 00:16:28.289 a speech in a crowded hall, and a 17 -year -old 00:16:28.289 --> 00:16:30.950 boy named Yamaguchi Otoya rushed the stage with 00:16:30.950 --> 00:16:34.799 a short sword. and plunge it right into Asanuma's 00:16:34.799 --> 00:16:37.059 torso. And it was broadcast on live television. 00:16:37.299 --> 00:16:40.100 On live television? The footage is still absolutely 00:16:40.100 --> 00:16:42.960 shocking to watch today. The assassin was just 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:46.679 a kid. A right -wing extremist kid. He was arrested, 00:16:46.779 --> 00:16:49.240 and then three weeks later he committed suicide 00:16:49.240 --> 00:16:51.240 in his prison cell. And for the right -wing in 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:54.820 Japan, this kid, Yamaguchi, became a martyr. 00:16:54.980 --> 00:16:57.559 A hero. Exactly. They worshipped him. And then, 00:16:57.700 --> 00:17:00.320 just a few months later... And Zabuchi decides 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:02.240 he's going to write about it. He fictionalizes 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:04.759 the assassin. He writes 17, where he tries to 00:17:04.759 --> 00:17:06.500 get inside the head of a boy who would do something 00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:09.319 like this. But here's the key. He doesn't paint 00:17:09.319 --> 00:17:11.859 him as some glorious samurai hero. He paints 00:17:11.859 --> 00:17:14.220 him as a lonely, sexually frustrated, deeply 00:17:14.220 --> 00:17:17.220 confused teenager who clings to the emperor cult 00:17:17.220 --> 00:17:20.160 because he has no self -esteem. Wow. So he took 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:23.019 their god and he made him into a pathetic, lonely 00:17:23.019 --> 00:17:25.720 teenager. He completely stripped away the myth. 00:17:25.819 --> 00:17:29.180 And the reaction was nuclear. The extreme right 00:17:29.180 --> 00:17:31.359 wing went absolutely berserk. They felt he was 00:17:31.359 --> 00:17:33.319 blaspheming their sacred martyr. What kind of 00:17:33.319 --> 00:17:35.160 backlash are we talking about here? Bad reviews. 00:17:35.519 --> 00:17:38.680 We're talking death threats. Constant. Day and 00:17:38.680 --> 00:17:42.220 night. For weeks. The publisher, the magazine 00:17:42.220 --> 00:17:44.799 Banga Kukai, was besieged. And the publisher 00:17:44.799 --> 00:17:47.599 eventually caved. They issued a public apology 00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:51.240 to their offended readers. What about Sher? Refused 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:54.279 to apologize. He said, I wrote the truth. But 00:17:54.279 --> 00:17:57.220 he absolutely paid a price for it. He was physically 00:17:57.220 --> 00:17:59.240 assaulted by a right winger during a speech he 00:17:59.240 --> 00:18:01.140 was giving at the University of Tokyo. They actually 00:18:01.140 --> 00:18:03.980 attacked him physically. They jumped him. So 00:18:03.980 --> 00:18:05.819 he wasn't just fighting with words anymore. He 00:18:05.819 --> 00:18:08.960 was in real physical danger. And it connects 00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:11.019 right back to his childhood, doesn't it? He saw 00:18:11.019 --> 00:18:13.940 the violent, dangerous edge of that unwavering 00:18:13.940 --> 00:18:16.259 loyalty to the emperor, and he refused to bow 00:18:16.259 --> 00:18:18.660 down to it. So here he is. He's the bad boy of 00:18:18.660 --> 00:18:20.980 Japanese letters. He's writing about sex, violence, 00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:23.220 political assassination. He's getting death threats. 00:18:23.339 --> 00:18:27.349 It's this literary provocateur. But then something 00:18:27.349 --> 00:18:31.250 happens in 1963, and the whole story just pivots 00:18:31.250 --> 00:18:33.210 completely. The pivot. This is the moment where 00:18:33.210 --> 00:18:35.569 the political becomes intensely personal. His 00:18:35.569 --> 00:18:39.029 son, Hikari, is born. Yes. In 1963, his eldest 00:18:39.029 --> 00:18:41.809 son, Hikari, was born with a brain hernia. A 00:18:41.809 --> 00:18:44.210 brain hernia. It was a catastrophic birth defect. 00:18:44.549 --> 00:18:46.950 The doctors told Hood that the child would have 00:18:46.950 --> 00:18:49.569 permanent severe learning disabilities. They 00:18:49.569 --> 00:18:52.009 said surgery was required just to save his life, 00:18:52.069 --> 00:18:54.690 but that his quality of life would be, well. 00:18:55.019 --> 00:18:57.119 very different and he really struggled with this 00:18:57.119 --> 00:18:58.700 i think it's important to say that he didn't 00:18:58.700 --> 00:19:01.039 just instantly become this saintly father figure 00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:03.500 no not at all and that's what makes him such 00:19:03.500 --> 00:19:06.390 a powerful and honest writer He was brutally 00:19:06.390 --> 00:19:09.390 honest about his own darkness. He admitted that 00:19:09.390 --> 00:19:12.289 he wrestled with the desire to just escape. He 00:19:12.289 --> 00:19:14.529 wanted to run away. He even wrestled with the 00:19:14.529 --> 00:19:16.910 idea of letting the child die. He stared right 00:19:16.910 --> 00:19:19.650 into the abyss. He absolutely did. And instead 00:19:19.650 --> 00:19:22.849 of hiding that shame, he wrote about it. He wrote 00:19:22.849 --> 00:19:26.089 the novel A Personal Matter in 1964. Which is 00:19:26.089 --> 00:19:28.150 probably his most famous book, at least internationally. 00:19:28.150 --> 00:19:31.329 I would say so, yeah. The protagonist is this 00:19:31.329 --> 00:19:34.109 guy nicknamed Bird. Bird's wife gives birth to 00:19:34.109 --> 00:19:36.950 a brain -damaged baby, and Bird spends the entire 00:19:36.950 --> 00:19:39.910 novel just trying to run away. He drinks, he 00:19:39.910 --> 00:19:42.509 has an affair, he even plots to have the baby 00:19:42.509 --> 00:19:45.049 killed by a shady doctor. It is a rough read. 00:19:45.069 --> 00:19:48.230 It's so unflinching. It's existentialism in practice. 00:19:48.410 --> 00:19:50.609 It's Sartre's philosophy put to the ultimate 00:19:50.609 --> 00:19:53.730 most painful test. There's no God to tell Bird 00:19:53.730 --> 00:19:56.529 what to do. There's no instruction manual. He 00:19:56.529 --> 00:19:59.390 has to choose. Does he escape his responsibility 00:19:59.390 --> 00:20:02.529 or does he accept this new reality? And in the 00:20:02.529 --> 00:20:04.549 book, and this is a spoiler but it's crucial, 00:20:04.910 --> 00:20:08.150 Bird eventually stops running. At the end, he 00:20:08.150 --> 00:20:10.650 decides to keep the baby and raise him. And that 00:20:10.650 --> 00:20:13.650 choice mirrors She's life. He chose to accept 00:20:13.650 --> 00:20:16.390 Hikari, and that single decision changed his 00:20:16.390 --> 00:20:18.569 writing forever. How so? What was the shift? 00:20:19.190 --> 00:20:22.029 Well, the political assassins, they just disappeared 00:20:22.029 --> 00:20:24.960 from his work. The occupation theory stuff faded 00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:26.859 into the background. He started writing over 00:20:26.859 --> 00:20:29.660 and over again about the idiot boy archetype. 00:20:29.660 --> 00:20:32.240 Now that phrase, idiot boy, sounds pretty harsh 00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:34.539 to modern ears. It does, but we have to understand 00:20:34.539 --> 00:20:37.380 he was using it in a very specific literary sense. 00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:40.279 He was referencing Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot 00:20:40.279 --> 00:20:42.500 or the Holy Fool tradition in literature. Okay, 00:20:42.559 --> 00:20:44.559 so what's the idea behind the Holy Fool? The 00:20:44.559 --> 00:20:47.539 idea is that this child, this person who is outside 00:20:47.539 --> 00:20:50.200 of normal society, possesses a kind of spiritual 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.750 purity. a connection to the forest of the soul 00:20:53.750 --> 00:20:57.410 that all the civilized modern intellectuals lack. 00:20:57.690 --> 00:21:00.170 So the themes of his work shifted from revolution 00:21:00.170 --> 00:21:03.490 to coexistence. Exactly. How do we live with 00:21:03.490 --> 00:21:06.650 the other? How do we heal? Hikari became his 00:21:06.650 --> 00:21:09.970 muse. He said that he was writing in a way to 00:21:09.970 --> 00:21:12.410 give his son a voice. And the most incredible 00:21:12.410 --> 00:21:14.349 twist of this whole story is that Hikari didn't 00:21:14.349 --> 00:21:17.259 stay silent. No. This is just the most beautiful 00:21:17.259 --> 00:21:19.279 part of the whole story. Hikari grew up with 00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:22.000 very severe limitations in language, but he had 00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:25.440 this incredible, uncanny ear for music. He could 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:28.299 identify bird calls instantly, he responded deeply 00:21:28.299 --> 00:21:30.640 to Mozart, and eventually he began to compose 00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:33.519 his own music. He became a composer. A professional 00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:36.650 one. A successful classical composer, yes. There's 00:21:36.650 --> 00:21:38.769 this wonderful image you can picture of the household. 00:21:39.150 --> 00:21:41.609 The father in one corner of the room writing 00:21:41.609 --> 00:21:44.250 these dense, difficult, complex novels about 00:21:44.250 --> 00:21:46.430 his son. And the son in the other corner of the 00:21:46.430 --> 00:21:49.069 same room writing pure, beautiful, melodic music. 00:21:49.309 --> 00:21:51.849 That is just amazing. The father tries to give 00:21:51.849 --> 00:21:54.450 the son a literary voice, and the son finds his 00:21:54.450 --> 00:21:57.329 own very real musical voice. It's one of the 00:21:57.329 --> 00:21:59.809 great redemption arcs in literary history. Much 00:21:59.809 --> 00:22:02.049 later in his life, he wrote a memoir called A 00:22:02.049 --> 00:22:04.480 Healing Family. which really showed the warmth 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:06.960 and the humor of their life together. It was 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:09.480 a million miles away from the darkness and despair 00:22:09.480 --> 00:22:13.099 of a personal matter. So we've moved from the 00:22:13.099 --> 00:22:16.680 angry young man to the dedicated father. And 00:22:16.680 --> 00:22:19.160 the world, it really took notice of this transformation. 00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:22.960 Let's fast forward to 1994, the Nobel Prize. 00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:25.819 The absolute pinnacle. The Swedish Academy awarded 00:22:25.819 --> 00:22:28.400 him the Nobel Prize in Literature. And their 00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:30.980 citation was fascinating. They said he created 00:22:30.980 --> 00:22:33.440 an imagined world where life and myth condensed 00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:35.799 to form a disconcerting picture of the human 00:22:35.799 --> 00:22:38.799 predicament today. Life and myth condense. That's 00:22:38.799 --> 00:22:40.700 it right there. That's the village in the city. 00:22:40.759 --> 00:22:43.339 That's the grandmother's stories and the existentialist 00:22:43.339 --> 00:22:45.799 philosophy. It's all of it combined into one. 00:22:46.019 --> 00:22:48.039 And when he won, he gave an interview to the 00:22:48.039 --> 00:22:49.940 New York Times and said that his writing was 00:22:49.940 --> 00:22:53.160 focused on one thing, the dignity of human beings. 00:22:53.420 --> 00:22:55.740 Which is so poignant, isn't it? Considering his 00:22:55.740 --> 00:22:58.509 early work was all about humiliation. He moved 00:22:58.509 --> 00:23:01.569 from analyzing humiliation to celebrating dignity. 00:23:01.829 --> 00:23:04.109 A perfect way to put it. So he wins the Nobel. 00:23:04.369 --> 00:23:07.890 Yeah. Japan is thrilled. This is only the second 00:23:07.890 --> 00:23:11.430 Japanese author to win after Kawabata. The government 00:23:11.430 --> 00:23:14.089 is popping the champagne corks. And then comes 00:23:14.089 --> 00:23:15.869 the scandal we talked about right at the start, 00:23:15.990 --> 00:23:18.490 the order of culture. The government steps in. 00:23:18.920 --> 00:23:20.900 They want to give him the order of culture. It's 00:23:20.900 --> 00:23:23.079 customary. It's what's done for Nobel winners. 00:23:23.299 --> 00:23:27.160 But he refuses. He refuses. Flat out. And this 00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:29.220 brings us right back to that core conviction. 00:23:29.940 --> 00:23:33.000 He hadn't forgotten 1945. He hadn't forgotten 00:23:33.000 --> 00:23:35.279 the betrayal of the teachers in that classroom. 00:23:35.480 --> 00:23:37.799 So for him, accepting a medal from the emperor 00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:39.940 would have been... Well, hypocrisy. It would 00:23:39.940 --> 00:23:41.460 have been a betrayal of his own core values. 00:23:41.559 --> 00:23:44.099 He saw a very clear distinction between democracy 00:23:44.099 --> 00:23:47.619 and the imperial system. And so he made that 00:23:47.619 --> 00:23:50.960 famous statement. I do not recognize any authority, 00:23:51.140 --> 00:23:53.819 any value higher than democracy. That is such 00:23:53.819 --> 00:23:56.299 a bold, unambiguous statement. He's basically 00:23:56.299 --> 00:23:59.099 saying the emperor is not above the democratic 00:23:59.099 --> 00:24:02.000 will of the people. And in Japan, even in the 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:05.299 90s, that is a loaded controversial statement. 00:24:05.359 --> 00:24:07.779 Yeah. The right wing was furious all over again. 00:24:07.859 --> 00:24:10.160 He's nearly 60 years old at this point. He's 00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:12.329 a Nobel laureate. the most famous writer in the 00:24:12.329 --> 00:24:14.990 country. And he's still getting threats. He is 00:24:14.990 --> 00:24:17.430 still a lightning rod. But it just goes to show 00:24:17.430 --> 00:24:19.990 that his conviction wasn't some phase of his 00:24:19.990 --> 00:24:22.609 youth. It wasn't just teenage rebellion. It was 00:24:22.609 --> 00:24:25.529 his philosophical core. He would not accept a 00:24:25.529 --> 00:24:28.009 badge of honor from a system he felt had lied 00:24:28.009 --> 00:24:30.210 to his entire generation. But he wasn't done 00:24:30.210 --> 00:24:32.430 fighting. In fact, you could argue his biggest 00:24:32.430 --> 00:24:34.910 legal battle was still ahead of him. Let's talk 00:24:34.910 --> 00:24:36.730 about the Okinawa lawsuit. This is where he goes 00:24:36.730 --> 00:24:40.240 from being writer to defendant. This is a fascinating 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:42.960 and terrifying story. It's a battle over memory 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:45.799 itself. And it stems from a book he wrote way, 00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:48.839 way back in 1970 called Okinawa Notes. What was 00:24:48.839 --> 00:24:50.599 that book about? It was a collection of essays 00:24:50.599 --> 00:24:53.779 about the situation in Okinawa. And in it, he 00:24:53.779 --> 00:24:56.200 addressed a very dark chapter of the Battle of 00:24:56.200 --> 00:25:00.039 Okinawa in 1945. He stated, based on testimony, 00:25:00.259 --> 00:25:03.079 that the Japanese military had coerced Okinawan 00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:05.599 civilians into committing mass suicide. This 00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:08.400 is the horrific history where entire families 00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:11.039 were given grenades by soldiers and told to kill 00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:13.000 themselves rather than surrender to the Americans. 00:25:13.220 --> 00:25:16.480 Yes. And for decades, this was the widely accepted 00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:19.920 historical fact. But by the year 2005, there 00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:22.799 was a rising tide of historical revisionism in 00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:25.759 Japan. There was this movement to clean up the 00:25:25.759 --> 00:25:28.200 history of the war, to make the military look 00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:31.819 noble and heroic again. So they came for show. 00:25:31.980 --> 00:25:35.400 Two retired military officers sued Kinza Burshev 00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:38.500 for libel. They sued him in 2005 for a book he 00:25:38.500 --> 00:25:42.299 had written in 1970. 35 years later. Yes. It 00:25:42.299 --> 00:25:44.960 was a strategic lawsuit. They claimed his writing 00:25:44.960 --> 00:25:48.279 defamed them and the entire military. Their argument 00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:51.049 was that the mass suicides were voluntary. that 00:25:51.049 --> 00:25:53.490 the Okinawan civilians chose to die out of pure 00:25:53.490 --> 00:25:55.630 loyalty. That just sounds like a terrifying attempt 00:25:55.630 --> 00:25:57.789 to rewrite history. It was. The stakes were huge. 00:25:58.009 --> 00:25:59.970 If they could get a legal judgment against a 00:25:59.970 --> 00:26:02.309 Nobel Prize winner, they could use that to force 00:26:02.309 --> 00:26:04.589 changes in school textbooks. They could literally 00:26:04.589 --> 00:26:07.029 scrub the history books clean. So this wasn't 00:26:07.029 --> 00:26:08.930 just about his bank account. This was about the 00:26:08.930 --> 00:26:12.250 truth of what happened in 1945. Exactly. And 00:26:12.250 --> 00:26:14.890 it took a huge toll on him. He barely wrote any 00:26:14.890 --> 00:26:18.180 fiction between 2006 and 2008. He was completely 00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:20.799 consumed by this trial. He would sit in the courtroom 00:26:20.799 --> 00:26:23.099 in Osaka just listening to the arguments day 00:26:23.099 --> 00:26:26.140 after day. But he won in the end. He did. In 00:26:26.140 --> 00:26:28.599 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all 00:26:28.599 --> 00:26:31.940 the charges. And the judge, a man named Toshimasa 00:26:31.940 --> 00:26:35.559 Fukami, his ruling was crystal clear. He ruled 00:26:35.559 --> 00:26:38.259 that, quote, the military was deeply involved 00:26:38.259 --> 00:26:41.140 in the mass suicides. It was a total and complete 00:26:41.140 --> 00:26:43.920 vindication for Ray. That must have been a monumental 00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:47.180 relief. Pry's response was classic, Ray. He didn't 00:26:47.180 --> 00:26:49.839 gloat. He didn't celebrate. He simply said, the 00:26:49.839 --> 00:26:52.539 judge accurately read my writing. The judge accurately 00:26:52.539 --> 00:26:55.089 read my writing. I love that. It's so powerful 00:26:55.089 --> 00:26:57.269 in his understatement. And after the trial, he 00:26:57.269 --> 00:26:59.509 felt free to write fiction again. He published 00:26:59.509 --> 00:27:02.470 a novel called Death by Water in 2009. And this 00:27:02.470 --> 00:27:04.369 book features a character who's based on his 00:27:04.369 --> 00:27:07.509 own father. Yeah. Yes. We mentioned his father 00:27:07.509 --> 00:27:11.319 died in the war in 1944. In the novel, the protagonist's 00:27:11.319 --> 00:27:13.400 father is a staunch supporter of the imperial 00:27:13.400 --> 00:27:16.160 system who ends up drowning in a flood. So even 00:27:16.160 --> 00:27:19.039 in his late 70s, Shay is still processing that 00:27:19.039 --> 00:27:21.279 primary trauma. He's still wrestling with the 00:27:21.279 --> 00:27:23.400 ghost of his father and the ghost of the emperor. 00:27:24.039 --> 00:27:26.720 And then, just two years later, in 2011, another 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:29.599 disaster strikes Japan. The Fukushima nuclear 00:27:29.599 --> 00:27:32.000 disaster. And this woke the activist in him one 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:34.420 last time. You have to remember, Shea had been 00:27:34.420 --> 00:27:36.500 writing about Hiroshima and the victims of the 00:27:36.500 --> 00:27:39.339 atomic bomb, the Hibakusha, since the 1960s. 00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:43.220 He saw it as a profound moral duty. So for him, 00:27:43.380 --> 00:27:45.940 nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs are deeply 00:27:45.940 --> 00:27:48.920 connected. He sees them as two sides of the same 00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:52.000 existential threat. To him, nuclear energy is 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:54.079 an affront to the forest, an affront to life 00:27:54.079 --> 00:27:56.880 itself. After the Fukushima disaster, he became 00:27:56.880 --> 00:27:59.880 a very vocal anti -nuclear activist. And he wasn't 00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:01.559 just, you know, writing letters to the editor 00:28:01.559 --> 00:28:03.680 from his study. He was out on the streets. In 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:05.940 2013, he helped organize a mass demonstration 00:28:05.940 --> 00:28:08.940 in Tokyo. Thousands and thousands of people showed 00:28:08.940 --> 00:28:12.039 up. And there's Sir, this elderly, somewhat frail 00:28:12.039 --> 00:28:14.640 intellectual leading the charge. There's a really 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:16.849 interesting story about him and... Noam Chomsky, 00:28:16.950 --> 00:28:19.269 the American linguist, isn't there? Yes, they 00:28:19.269 --> 00:28:21.849 corresponded. Chomsky sent Chomsky a copy of 00:28:21.849 --> 00:28:24.589 his Okinawa notes. And Chomsky replied with this 00:28:24.589 --> 00:28:27.009 story from his own childhood. He said that when 00:28:27.009 --> 00:28:29.029 he first heard about the bombing of Hiroshima 00:28:29.029 --> 00:28:32.589 in August of 1945, he couldn't bear the celebration 00:28:32.589 --> 00:28:35.049 he saw all around him in America. Everyone was 00:28:35.049 --> 00:28:37.490 cheering because the war was over. Right. But 00:28:37.490 --> 00:28:40.069 Chomsky, who was just a teenager, went out into 00:28:40.069 --> 00:28:42.910 the woods near his summer camp. And he just sat 00:28:42.910 --> 00:28:45.680 there alone until the evening. He couldn't participate 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:48.240 in the collective joy because all he could think 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:51.240 about was the human suffering. That image, a 00:28:51.240 --> 00:28:53.680 kid sitting alone in the woods refusing to celebrate, 00:28:53.940 --> 00:28:56.039 it sounds just like something out of a no novel. 00:28:56.299 --> 00:28:59.220 It resonated so deeply with him. She said later, 00:28:59.700 --> 00:29:01.920 I've always respected Chomsky, but I respected 00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:04.500 him even more after he told me that. It's that 00:29:04.500 --> 00:29:07.539 shared sense of moral isolation, of being the 00:29:07.539 --> 00:29:09.460 one person who has to step out of the parade 00:29:09.460 --> 00:29:12.500 to ask, wait a minute, is this right? His final 00:29:12.500 --> 00:29:15.289 novel was published in 2013. And it was titled 00:29:15.289 --> 00:29:18.569 In Late Style. Banan Yoshikishu. It's a direct 00:29:18.569 --> 00:29:21.549 reference to Edward Said's concept of late style 00:29:21.549 --> 00:29:24.450 in art. And it features his longtime literary 00:29:24.450 --> 00:29:28.250 alter ego, a character named Kudito Choko. In 00:29:28.250 --> 00:29:29.990 the book, the character finds he's lost interest 00:29:29.990 --> 00:29:32.349 in writing fiction after the 2011 earthquake 00:29:32.349 --> 00:29:34.849 and tsunami. He decides he has to write directly 00:29:34.849 --> 00:29:37.990 about what he calls the age of catastrophe. It 00:29:37.990 --> 00:29:40.309 seems so fitting. He started his career writing 00:29:40.309 --> 00:29:42.650 about the catastrophe of the war, and he ended 00:29:42.650 --> 00:29:44.710 it writing about the catastrophe of the tsunami 00:29:44.710 --> 00:29:47.289 and nuclear disaster. He was a witness. From 00:29:47.289 --> 00:29:49.450 beginning to end, he was a witness. Ken Zabushit 00:29:49.450 --> 00:29:53.109 passed away on March 3, 2023. He was 88 years 00:29:53.109 --> 00:29:55.849 old. When you look back at this incredible life, 00:29:56.009 --> 00:29:58.670 the village boy, the angry student, the father 00:29:58.670 --> 00:30:01.309 of a disabled son, the Nobel winner who said 00:30:01.309 --> 00:30:04.529 no to the emperor, the elderly activist, what 00:30:04.529 --> 00:30:06.920 is the legacy? What does it all add up to? He 00:30:06.920 --> 00:30:08.559 described himself once in an interview he did 00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:10.599 with the Paris Review. He said, in principle, 00:30:10.839 --> 00:30:13.420 I am an anarchist. Kurt Vonnegut once said he 00:30:13.420 --> 00:30:15.559 was an agnostic who respects Jesus Christ. I 00:30:15.559 --> 00:30:18.140 am an anarchist who loves democracy. An anarchist 00:30:18.140 --> 00:30:20.279 who loves democracy. That's a fantastic contradiction. 00:30:20.680 --> 00:30:23.079 I think it sums him up perfectly. He believed 00:30:23.079 --> 00:30:25.579 in the people. He believed in the messy, difficult, 00:30:25.819 --> 00:30:29.529 frustrating work of democracy. But he never, 00:30:29.549 --> 00:30:31.930 ever trusted the state. He never trusted the 00:30:31.930 --> 00:30:34.490 system. And you could say he moved Japanese literature 00:30:34.490 --> 00:30:36.650 from a focus on a certain kind of aesthetic, 00:30:36.829 --> 00:30:41.650 detached beauty to something grotesque and real 00:30:41.650 --> 00:30:44.710 and deeply, messily human. He showed that you 00:30:44.710 --> 00:30:47.730 could take the most personal, private pain imaginable, 00:30:47.789 --> 00:30:50.849 the birth of a child with brain damage, and turn 00:30:50.849 --> 00:30:53.569 it into universal art. He showed that you could 00:30:53.569 --> 00:30:56.009 take the political anger of a betrayed generation 00:30:56.009 --> 00:30:59.029 and turn it into a lifelong fight for truth. 00:30:59.430 --> 00:31:01.329 It's a lesson in using your stuff, isn't it? 00:31:01.349 --> 00:31:03.829 Your own personal baggage and trauma. Absolutely. 00:31:04.009 --> 00:31:05.910 He didn't hide his trauma. He didn't hide his 00:31:05.910 --> 00:31:07.930 son. He didn't hide his political views. He put 00:31:07.930 --> 00:31:09.630 it all right there on the page for everyone to 00:31:09.630 --> 00:31:11.970 see. And that's why this matters to us, to you 00:31:11.970 --> 00:31:13.869 listening, even if you're not a Japanese writer 00:31:13.869 --> 00:31:16.109 from the 20th century. It's about the refusal 00:31:16.109 --> 00:31:18.910 to conform, even when your whole country, your 00:31:18.910 --> 00:31:21.089 whole culture, expects you to just play nice 00:31:21.089 --> 00:31:23.369 and accept the prize. He could have accepted 00:31:23.369 --> 00:31:25.470 that order of culture. He could have been the 00:31:25.470 --> 00:31:27.730 grand old man of letters, safe and respected 00:31:27.730 --> 00:31:31.430 and beloved. But he chose to be difficult because 00:31:31.430 --> 00:31:34.190 for him, being difficult was the only way to 00:31:34.190 --> 00:31:36.809 be honest. So here's a thought to leave you with. 00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:41.099 created this entire sprawling literary universe, 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:44.839 dozens of books, characters, myths, and a huge 00:31:44.839 --> 00:31:47.660 part of it was to give his son, Hikari, a voice. 00:31:47.920 --> 00:31:50.720 He amplified the voice of the voiceless. So in 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:52.859 a world that is just full of information overload, 00:31:53.039 --> 00:31:55.220 full of noise, whose voice are you trying to 00:31:55.220 --> 00:31:58.339 amplify? And maybe more importantly, are you 00:31:58.339 --> 00:32:01.000 brave enough to refuse a badge of honor if it 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:03.140 conflicts with your most deeply held core values? 00:32:03.420 --> 00:32:05.460 That's the ultimate question, isn't it? The courage 00:32:05.460 --> 00:32:08.670 to say no. Rest in peace, Ken Zabrusia. What 00:32:08.670 --> 00:32:10.710 a life. Thanks for listening to this deep dive. 00:32:10.869 --> 00:32:12.170 We'll catch you on the next one. Goodbye.