What could be said for the human being after Nanking, Dresden, Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Whatever the motivation, this is what we did to each other, and continue to do to this very hour. How can a writer write about goodness when people of all nations, autocratic or democratic, take up murder and torture with the same eager sense of merriment that they do an innocuous hobby?

For the postwar writer the dilemma was plain. How can you create a positive character who is motivated by both a clear knowledge of innate human cruelty and an unfaltering loving kindness? Given the real world, the only hero appears to be an anti-hero; the only emperor is the emperor of the oven.

Postwar Japanese literature produced a stunning variety of novelists, from Yukio Mishima to Haruki Murakami, from Shohei Ooka to Kenji Nakagami, and many more of brilliance. Their work is distinguished by a truth to human nature, with our offensive blemishes on display for all the world to see. They are influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by the catastrophic defeat of Japan in its war of aggression, and strive to come to terms with it in a good part of their literature.