Makoto Oda

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Makoto Oda ( Japanese 小田 実 , Oda Makoto ; born June 2, 1932 in Osaka , † July 30, 2007 ) was a Japanese writer .

life and work

At the age of 13, Oda experienced the absurdity and cruelty of war with the bombing of his hometown Osaka, the day before Japan's surrender. This experience shaped his attitude as a writer and activist. Oda wrote his first novel while he was still in high school in 1951 ( Asatte no shuki ). From 1952 he studied ancient Greek at the University of Tokyo and after completing his studies he worked as an English teacher. In 1958 he received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Harvard University . During this time he traveled through the USA, Canada, Mexico and India. His travelogue Nande mo mite yarō. Sekai ichinen ichidoru ryokō (I'll look at everything: A dollar-a-day trip around the world) appeared in 1961. It became a bestseller with which Oda established himself as a writer.

His novel America was published the following year . At the same time, Oda became active in the peace movement and founded a. a. with Shunsuke Tsurumi and Takeshi Kaikō in 1965 the League of Citizens' Movements for Peace in Vietnam ( ベ ト ナ ム に 平和 を! 市民 連 合 , short: marriage ), which partly worked underground against American military facilities in Japan and supported American deserters during the Vietnam War. He also wrote essays on the modern bourgeoisie and its relationship to power using the example of the relationship between Japan and the USA and the Vietnam War.

After Beheiren broke up , Oda published Son Mi , a translation of Seymour Hersh's My Lai 4: A Report of the Massacre and his Aftermath . In 1981 his most important work was his great novel Hiroshima , in which he again reflected on his themes of the relationship between the individual, society and (total) power, victims and perpetrators, victorious and defeated. From 1985 on, Oda stayed in West Berlin as a DAAD scholarship holder, where he helped found the “German-Japanese Peace Forum Berlin eV”.

In 1995, Oda experienced the Kobe earthquake , which was another decisive experience in addition to the war experiences in his childhood.

In the summer of 2004, he and eight other intellectuals founded the "Association for Article 9" ( 九 条 の 会 ). Since the meaning of Article 9, which stipulates Japan's waiver of a right to war, is no longer properly guaranteed, citizens now have to assure themselves of its worth and peace.

Oda Maktoto died of stomach cancer in 2007 at the age of 75 in a Tokyo hospital.

Works (selection)

  • Gyokusai. ( 玉 砕 ), 1998
    • Gyokusai: Japan's heroes die beautifully. translated by Michaela Manke. Hans Schiler Verlag, Berlin / Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89930-324-7 .
  • The commander. translated by Siegfried Schaarschmidt. In: Letter from the desert and other prose and poetry by contemporary Japanese authors. Ostasien-Verlag, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-89036-302-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Collective of authors: 新潮 日本 文学 小 辞典 (Shinchō Small Lexicon of Japanese Literature) . Shinchōsha, Tokyo 1981, ISBN 4-10-730204-0 , pp. 206 .
  2. ^ Gordon Mathews, Bruce White: Japan's Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society? 2012 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed on March 23, 2013]).
  3. ^ Roman Rosenbaum, Yasuko Claremont (Ed.): Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War: The Yakeato Generation . Routledge, 2011, ISBN 978-0-415-57951-3 , pp. 14 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed on March 23, 2013]).
  4. ↑ Welcome to our homepage. (No longer available online.) German-Japanese Peace Forum Berlin, archived from the original on January 8, 2013 ; Retrieved March 24, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.djf-ev.de
personal data
SURNAME Oda, Makoto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 小田 実 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Osaka , Osaka Prefecture
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 2007