27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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Plain Talk
Although the dust is slowly settling, one still cannot stop thinking about the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington. These brought back memories of the kamikaze attacks carried out by Japanese pilots during World War II. Kamikaze is a Japanese word meaning divine wind, first used in reference to a typhoon that destroyed the Mongol fleet that in 1281 was poised to invade Japan.
The word has come to refer to deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, denoting both the pilots and the plane itself. During World War II kamikaze attacks sank 34 ships and damaged hundred others. At Okinawa alone they inflicted the greatest losses ever suffered by the US navy in a single battle, killing almost 5,000 men.
As if in mockery of fate, a Japanese play about kamikaze pilots was recently shown in the US and London. The film star and playwright Masayuki Imai had defied post-war cultural conventions in Japan by writing a play -- in both Japanese and English -- called The Winds of God, an obvious reference to divine wind, or kamikaze.
The play is concerned with kamikaze pilots, regarded by the Japanese as heroes of almost mythical stature, fearless in their resolve to make the ultimate sacrifice in defence of emperor and country. Before writing the play, Imai interviewed more than 100 men who had been chosen for kamikaze missions but who survived because the war ended before they could carry them out.
In a recent interview with Gavin Bell in the Independent Review Imai said: "What they told me came as a shock. Most of them said they didn't want to go to the war. They said they were afraid of dying, they were not crazy."
They also told him they had no illusions about dying for the glory of Japan. "Their motivation was a belief that by giving their lives they could save their families from the humiliation and hardships of defeat."
Imai added: "What I learned from the kamikaze is that we need to communicate, between nations, races and religions." Yet still, adds Imai, in schools "they don't teach us about the last war. They want to hide this war."
The play was awarded a national arts prize, but both government and big business continue to reject any mention of the war. "There are blinkered attitudes in high places. There is a deeply ingrained tendency to hide or ignore what happened." It was because of this official disapproval that Imai took the production to America at his own expense, where audiences and critics received it appreciatively.
The play centres around two comedians, from the Tokyo of today, who are killed in a motor accident and somehow reincarnated as airmen training to be kamikaze pilots in the final days of World War II. The pilots in the squadron greet them as old friends and the two comedians find themselves plunging into a history they had only vaguely heard of. They discover not only the fanaticism and cruelty of the old militaristic society, but also its discipline and patriotism.
Imai explains that "the play doesn't say anything about the war in terms of who was right and who was wrong. We know war is crazy and stupid. I was more interested in the mass hysteria generated by war, and how it affects individual, human relations and behaviour." "I was moved by the passion and sadness of suicide pilots who wished to live longer, yet had no choice but to sacrifice their lives in the name of war. I tried to express the importance of peace instead of glorifying death."
In Japan the play received mixed reactions from audiences. While many applauded the boldness of tackling a subject that disturbed the older generation others, however, thought the subject better left alone. But can history be so easily forgotten?
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