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Lavish are the Dead: Re-envisioning Japan's Korean War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Tessa Morris-Suzuki
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In 1957, a young Japanese writer published a collection of short stories which quickly attracted nationwide attention. The title of the collection - Shisha no Ogori - is particularly difficult to render into English, but has been translated by John Nathan as Lavish Are The Dead. The writer was Ōë Kenzaburō, and the success of this, his first published book, was the start of a career that would ultimately bring him international fame and a Nobel Prize for literature

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Research Article
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Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 52 , December 2013 , e3
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References

Notes

1 Ōë Kenzaburō (trans. John Nathan), “Lavish Are The Dead”, Japan Quarterly, vo. 12, no 2, April-June 1965, pp. 193-211.

2 Ōë, “Lavish Are The Dead”, pp. 199-200.

3 Chalmers Johnson, Conspiracy at Matsukawa, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973, p. 23; see also William S. Borden, The Pacific Alliance: United States Foreign Economic Policy and Japanese Trade Recovery, 1947-1955, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, p. 146; William J. Williams, A Revolutionary War: Korea and the Transformation of the Postwar World, Chicago, Imprint Publications, 1993, p. 209; Mark Metzler, “The Occupation”, in William Tsutsui ed., A Companion of Japanese History, Oxford, Blackwell, 2009, pp. 264-280, quotation from p. 275; Aaron Forsberg, America and the Japanese Miracle: The Cold War Context of Japan's Postwar Revival, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 84.

4 For example, John Bowen, The Gift of the Gods: The Impact of the Korean War on Japan, Hampton VA, Old Dominion Graphics Consultants Inc., 1984; Reinhard Drifte, ‘Japan's Involvement in the Korean War’, in James Cotton and Ian Neary eds., The Korean War in History, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1989, pp. 121-134; Michael Schaller, ‘The Korean War: The Economic and Strategic Impact on Japan‘, in William Stueck ed., The Korean War in World History, Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2004, pp. 145-176.

5 Christina Klein, Cold War, Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.

6 “Shitai arai no arubaito”, entry in the Japanese version of Wikipedia, accessed 2 January 2013.

7 Nishimura Yoichi, Hōigaku kyōshitsu to no wakare, Tokyo, Asahi Bunko, 1995, pp. 46 and 50.

8 Jan Harold Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meaning, New York, W.W. Norton, 2003.

9 Bradley Lynn Coleman states that the American Graves Registration Service, which returned US remains via morgues in Kokura and later also Yokohama, recovered the remains of 36,576 US servicemen killed in Korea. Bradley Lynn Coleman, ‘Recovering the Korean War Dead, 1950-1958: Graves Registration, Forensic Anthropology, and Wartime Memorialization’, The Journal of Military History, vol. 72 no. 1, 2008, pp. 179-222, reference to p. 217.

10 Furue later migrated to Hawaii, where he became a renowned forensic anthropologist, but his limited academic credentials were to become a source of controversy: it seems that he never completed graduate study at the University of Tokyo. See Thomas M. Hawley, The Remains of War: Bodies, Politics, and the Search for American Soldiers Unaccounted For in Southeast Asia, Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 106-108.

11 Hanihara Kazurō, Hone o yomu: Aru jinruigakusha no taiken, Tokyo, Chūkō Shinsho, 1965, ch. 1; see also ‘Chōsen senso shitai shorihan: Aru jinruigakusha no kaisō ‘, in Tōkyō 12-Chaneru Hōdōbu ed, Shōgen: Watashi no Shōwashi, vol 6, Gagugei Shorin, 1969, pp. 164-177.

12 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, quotation from p. 10.

13 John D. Martz Jr. ‘Homeward Bound’, Quartermaster Review, May-June 1954, accessed 8 January 2013.

14 Nam G. Kim, From Enemies to Allies: The Impact of the Korean War on US-Japan Relations, San Francisco, International Scholars Publications, 1997, p. 154.

15 ‘Home from Battle’, Pacific Stars and Stripes Far East Weekly Review, 18 November 1950.

16 See telegram from US Embassy Manila, 11 February 1958, re Embassy tel 2918 (Tokyo 86), in Okinawa Prefectural Archives, microfilm of National Archives and Records Administration documents, Records of the US Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, box 6 of HCRI-LA, folder no. 2, ‘Foreign National - Filipino’; on the Vinnell Corporation, see for example telegram from CG RYCOM Okinawa to CINCFE Tokyo, 29 November 1950, in Okinawa Prefectural Archives, microfilm of National Archives and Records Administration documents, ‘RYCOM Nov. 1950’.

17 Kawamura Kiichirō, Nihonjin senin ga mita Chōsen Sensō, Tokyo, Asahi Communications, 2007, p. 22.

18 On Japanese sailors and labourers in the Korean War zone, see Ishimaru, ‘Chōsen Sensō to Nihon no kakawari’. On the Red Cross nurses, see Kokkai Gijiroku, Sangiin, (record of the proceedings of the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament) 25 January 1953. On Japanese base workers at the Korean War front see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Postwar Warriors: Japanese Combatants in the Korean War’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 10, Issue 31, No. 1, July 30, 2012.

19 Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1987, p. 386.

20 For example, Fangong yishi fendou shi, bianzhuan weiyuanhui ed., Fangong yishi fendou shi, Taipei, Fangong Yishi Fendou Shi Jiuye Fudaochu, 1955, refers to an instance of an important Chinese POW being transferred to Tokyo, where he was questioned by an official of the GuoMindang. I am grateful to Dr. Cathy Churchman for providing me with this information.

21 For further discussion, see Tessa Morris- Suzuki, Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, chs. 3 and 4.

22 ‘Chōsen sensen ni tobu Nihonjin no chi: Sude ni nanasenninbun okuru’ Asahi Shinbun (evening edition), 16 January 1953, p. 3.

23 John C. Cook, ‘Graves Registration in the Korean Conflict’, The Quartermaster Review, March-April 1953, accessed 4 January 2013.

24 Coleman, ‘Recovering the Korean War Dead’, p. 192.

25 Cook, ‘Graves Registration in the Korean Conflict’.

26 Cook, ‘Graves Registration in the Korean Conflict’.

27 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, p. 67.

28 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, p. 83.

29 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, pp. 87-95.

30 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, pp. 131-138.

31 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, pp. 167-168.

32 Hanihara, Hone o yomu, pp. 44-45 and 168.

33 Yasuzo Ishimaru, ‘The Korean War and Japanese Ports: Support for the UN Forces and its Influences, NIDS Security Reports, no. 8, December 2007, pp. 55-70, quotation from pp. 63-64.

34 Interview with Hamada, in ‘Chōsen sensei shitai shorihan’, pp. 174-75; on the riot and its background, see also William T. Bowers, William M. Hammond and George L. McGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea, Washington DC, United States Army Center of Military History, 1996, pp. 79-81.

35 Quoted in Bowers, Hammond and McGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army, p. 65

36 Bowers, Hammond and McGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army, p. 79.

37 On the results of the enquiry, see Bowers, Hammond and McGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army, p 80. Other than their book, I have found no work in English on the Korean War that mentions the Kokura Riot. Very few Japanese language histories of the Korean War era mention it either, though it does provide the setting for Matsumoto Seichō’s)’s novel, Kuroji no e, which was published by Shinchōsha in 1965.

38 Bowers, Hammond and McGarrigle, Black Soldier, White Army, p. 159.

39 Hanson W. Baldwin, ‘Tense Lands in China's Shadow’, in Lloyd C. Gardner ed., The Korean War, New York, Quadrangle Books, 1972, pp. 128-138, quotation from p. 131. (Baldwin's essay was originally published in the New York Times Magazine on 24 December 1950).

40 Werner Bischof, Japan, London, Sylvan Press, 1954. The heavily orientalist tone of the text, composed by Robert Guillain after Bischof's untimely death in 1954, fails to obscure the power of the photographs.

41 Ishimaru, ‘The Korean War and Japanese Ports’, p. 63; on Korean War conflicts over access to ports, see also Nakamoto Teruo, Sasebo-ko sengoshi, Sasebo, Geibundō, 1985, p. 165.

42 See, for example, Nakamoto, Sasebo-kō sengoshi, p. 148.

43 Ono Toshihiko, ‘Kita-Kyūshū Mojikō no kōwan rōdōsha to sono Chōsen Sensō taiken’, Shakai Bunseki, no. 32, 2005, pp. 133-149, citation from p. 137.

44 Ono, ‘Kita-Kyū shū Mojikō no kōwan rōdōsha’, pp. 140-141; for further details of acts of sabotage during the Korean War, see Nishimura, Ōsaka de tatakatta Chōsen Sensō, ch. 6.

45 Ono, ‘Kita-Kyū shū Mojikō no kōwan rōdōsha’, pp. 143-144.

46 To give just one example, three major explosions, one in January 1952, one in August 1952 and one in June 1953, destroyed sections of Nihon Yushi's Taketomi factory, killing two workers and seriously injuring four others. The Jan. 1952 and June 1953 accidents are reported in Nihon Yushi KK ed., Nihon Yushi Sanjūnenshi, Tokyo, Nihon Yushi KK, 1967, pp. 554-555; the Aug. 1952 explosion is reported in the Asahi Shinbun evening edition, 19 August 1952, p. 3.