- Paperback: 132 pages
- Publisher: Kodansha International Ltd; 1st Paperback Ed edition (31 Dec 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 4770016182
- ISBN-13: 978-4770016188
- Product Dimensions: 17.8 x 10.7 x 1.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,457,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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2 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Spare, beautiful wartime tale.
8 Nov 2002
Format:Hardcover
Shizuko Go, Requiem (Kodansha International, 1973)
One of the review blurbs on the back of Requiem calls it The Japanese counterpart of Anne Franks diary. Actually, Requiem is a much better book than The Diary of a Young Girl; Go does a fine job of weaving her main characters dying moments in with recollections of the last year of her life. Go gives us no illusions from page one; her main character, Setsumo Oizumi, is lying in a bomb shelter close to death, clutching a grey notebook containing letters from her best friend, Naomi Niwa, and the flashbacks alternate between letters between the two of them and scenes from Oizumis life.
Where this short novel fails, and this is rare in Japanese novels, is in its lack of reserve. Go wanted to pen a horrors-of-war novel, and for the most part she succeeds. Much of the book uses the imagery of war, and Oizumis developing disillusionment with the war effort, to convey its pacifist message. But every once in a while Go drops the veil and comes out with a passage where the message overrides the medium; the book goes from a fine, sparse novel to a political polemic. There is never a point where this gets out of hand, and Go recovers herself quickly every time; still, one feels that perhaps one final revision under the watchful eye of an editor concerned more with the craft of writing than the art might have been a good idea.
Still, there is much to like here. You can safely ignore another of the reviewlets on the back (Should be compulsory reading for every Western schoolchild.) that would imply this to be a bad Americans! go to your room without supper! polemic; there is more of All Quiet on the Western Front here than there is Johnny Got His Gun, and Gos message is directed not at any one set of allies but at the futility of war in general. There are no guilt trips to be had aside from those all of humanity shares. Recommended. *** ½
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Beautiful and Insighful
16 Aug 2000
Format:Paperback
A beautifully written and moving story of a young girl struggling through the horrors of WWII and the subsequent backlash of the atomic bombs dropped in Japan. Much like Anne Frank, the story follows the life of a 16 year-old girl through the war, told through flashbacks, diary entries, notes/letters shared with her best friend, and first person narrative. I think it should be required reading for all westerners - a great book to introduce at the high school level, which would easily lend itself to discussion and research topics dealing with the horrors and responsibilities of war, the role the U.S. played in WWII, and the ethical issues raised by the invention and use of the atomic bomb.
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