cover image A Boy Called H: A Childhood in Wartime Japan

A Boy Called H: A Childhood in Wartime Japan

Kappa Senoh. Kodansha International (JPN), $28 (400pp) ISBN 978-4-7700-2325-4

A bestseller in Japan, Senoh's memoir (written effectively if unusually in the third person) of his childhood in wartime Kobe is refreshing in the honesty with which it faces some ugly realities in Japan before and during WWII. Senoh describes in meticulous detail the Orwellian nature of wartime Japan, with its secret police, its press censorship and its suffocating atmosphere of enforced conformity. Senoh and his family were suspected of disloyalty because they were practicing Christians and had friends in the U.S. What's most shocking about Senoh's account, however, is that despite his inner rebellion against the war, he consistently did his ""public duty."" In the book's most revealing episode, Senoh gives a passionate speech to a school admissions board about ""smash[ing] the American and British fiends."" Again and again, Senoh robotically mouths the party line when the situation requires it. He even assists an army officer in capturing a downed American pilot. How does Senoh resolve the breathtaking inconsistency between his doubting private self and his gung-ho public self? He doesn't. Senoh seems more comfortable hinting at, rather than directly confronting, big questions about personal responsibility and collective guilt. Maybe these questions remain too painful, both for himself and the entire Japanese nation, but failing to ask them leaves a gaping hole at the center of this narrative. At times, the book reads more like a detailed historical account and less like a personal story of survival; readers expecting an intimate memoir might be disappointed by Senoh's choice to tell his story from the distance of an emotionally detached third person. Nonetheless, this book is engaging, well-crafted and original. (Mar.)