Unhappy Soldier: Hino Ashihei and Japanese World War II Literature

This work chronicles the writings of Hino Ashihei, Japan’s popular World War II writer. Ashihei rose to national celebrity status during the Pacific War for his accounts of campaigns in China and Southeast Asia, works that identified and sympathised with the common soldier. Despite being linked to the nationalistic ideology of the wartime state and purged during the Occupation, Ashihei proved to be an enduring literary and cultural phenomenon, reinventing himself with new, post-war writing that confronted the sunny patriotism of his wartime work. This study presents material on how writing about the war was read during and after the conflict, and offers insight into the formation of Japan’s national discourse on the war experience.