Analyzing Dower's 'Embracing Defeat'

When most people think of World War Two they think of the Nazis and the concentration camps. They also think of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was part of Hitler’s Axis Powers and fought mostly naval battles with the U.S. Japan, prior to the 1940s, started to invade northern China, Manchuria. Japan gained control of Manchuria and what would be known as Taiwan after the Sino-Japanese War. You see, in America we take classes to learn about these things, for example Asian Studies, but what about in Japan? During the war, and after, what was it like to be a kid or teenager, an adult? How difficult was it to be in constant fear of being bombed, seeing planes fly through the sky not knowing if they were allied or not?

Historical and Cultural Context

In Embracing Defeat: Japan in the wake of World War Two, it explains how the people of Japan suffered from the war. Dower explains it was not only economical property damage or the loss of life cost that the Japanese suffered from but psychological damage.

“Dower's 'cultural history' begins with the anguish of physically and

materially 'shattered lives' at war's end. The shock, devastation, exhaustion and despair are unremittingly chronicled. The depth of loss and confusion which the Japanese people experienced is vividly conveyed, notably in Dower's accounts of the huge scale of social displacement and missing persons, and the long-drawn out period of 'food-wretchedness'”(Tolliday)
The people of Japan suffered greatly and not many people see that. In America, Japanese citizens were put in American versions of concentration camps, not nearly as harsh but undesirable.
The Japanese may have not fought much in Europe but they were Hitler’s eyes in the sea. Japan, being an island country, had a great navy. Hitler used their navy to his advantage. The Japanese spent a great deal of their time in the Pacific Ocean fighting off the Allied Americans. Though Japan had a great navy, the Americans navy and tactics were far better. The technique used by the Americans that crushed Japan was that of ‘Island Hoping’ (Bywater). The idea of island hoping was to ho around in the Pacific Ocean islands and claim each island one at a time, freeing them from Japanese control.
To understand the majority of what happened in World War Two for Japan it basically sums up to about, the Japanese were the Axis Powers navy, the Americans defeated them, and then bombed them, twice, thus leading to the Japanese people suffering greatly.
WW2 brought the introduction of many new inventions such as the machine gun, airplanes pressurized cabins, different types of gasses, radar, synthetic rubber, computer, jet engine and nuclear power (Mindell. War is the time when people make the most production and advancements so that their side can win the war.
Summary of Literature
Kafka on the Shore is a story with two parallel stories set in Japan after World War Two.

The first story is of a boy named Kafka Tamura. Kaka is fifteen year old boy that has run away from home to find his long lost sister and mother. After gathering the necessary items he will need for his trip; clothes, money, soaps and deodorant, and also his father’s gold lighter along with an old cellphone he found in his father’s desk, he sets out on a train from his home town of Tokyo and into the city of Takamatsu. During the bus ride, Kafka, meets a girl named Sakura. After a brief rest stop and Sakura and Kafka meet each other they decide to sit on the bus together. Once in town Kafka checks into a hotel and proceeds to spend the rest of his days in the Komura Memorial Library. There he befriends the library assistant, Oshima and the manager of the library Miss

Saeki.
Nakata is an old man that is mentally handicapped. In his childhood, during World War Two, his school teacher and his kindergarten class of about twenty kids took a ‘field trip’ into the woods. On this trip, while they were collecting edible mushrooms to eat because of the rations, all of the students collapsed and were unconscious. Though maintaining a healthy state, Nakata and his classmates were unresponsive. All of his classmates woke up in a short time but he, however, did not. He was taken to the military hospital and woke up there much later than the others. When he did, in fact, wake up he had no memory of anything he learned in school or even his parents’ names. He was a total blank slate. Now an old man, Nakata, gets money from the government for being mentally retarded and also gains money from finding people with lost cats.
As we continue on in the story things start to get a little messed up. Kafka wakes up near a shrine covered in blood and with no memory of what happened, but don’t worry this has happened before. He goes to Sakura for help and he stays the night, but not after her giving Kafka a hand job. Though Kafka has no idea what went on that night he troopers on. Oshima offers to let him stay in his small cabin in the woods, since he has checked himself out of the hotel to preserve his money. Miss Saeki then arranges for him to move into the library (It was the Komura estate beforehand so it’s equipped with bedrooms). Kafka then earns a job as an assistant at the library. He then learns of Miss Saeki’s tragic past from Oshima.
Miss Saeki disappeared for 29 years but also wrote a song called Kafka on the Shore, oh the irony. When Kafka finally receives his room at the library he notices a painting on the wall of a boy on the shore, huh I wonder what that could be referencing. A few days pass and Oshima comes and shows Kafka a newspaper article showing that his father had been murdered back in Tokyo and that the police are now trying to locate his missing son. A few days pass and Kafka is woken in the middle of the night only to find the ghost of a fifteen year old Miss Saeki. Enchanted by her beauty, Kafka, being a fifteen year old boy, instantly falls in love with her. Kafka discusses with Oshima that Miss Saeki could be his mother. Miss Saeki wrote a book about people getting hit by lighting and he believes that she may have interviewed his father because he was once struck by lightning while being a caddy in college.
The police come looking for Kafka and Oshima takes him back to his cabin again. Upon his second day in the cabin he dreams of having sex with Sakura, during which she confesses that she is his sister but not by blood. Kafka, with nothing to lose, ventures deep into the forest. There he meets two soldiers from the old imperial army. They lead him to a small village where he meets Miss Saeki. She tells him that he is the boy on the shore in the painting and that she is his mother and that she is sorry. He goes back to the library to find out Miss Saeki has died of a heart attack. He decides to go back home to Tokyo. On the train home, the boy named crow tells him that he is the “world’s toughest fifteen year old” (Murakami)
Nakata’s story is far more simple but just as confusing and disturbing. His story starts with him trying to find a cat by the name of Goma. He finds a cat and names him Kawamura. Unfortunately the cat is too dumb to give him any information. Luckily there is a Siamese cat named Mimi to help him out. Nakata is told to go to an abandoned lot, but to beware the tall man in a tall hat and long leather boots. While at the lot he meets a big black dog that takes him to a man named Johnnie Walker who says he knows where Goma is. Johnnie explains that he kills cats to steal their souls to make a magic flute. The man kills Kawamura and Nakata is forced to kill him to prevent him from killing Mimi and Goma.
Nakata leaves Tokyo but not before it rains mackerel and sardines. He hitchhikes to Fujigowa and finds a trucker by the name of Hoshino. They end up traveling all the way to Takamatsu. There they meet a hustler by the name of Colonel Sanders (Yes, the KFC guy). While being pursued by the police, Sanders lets them stay at his place. Soon the end up at Kafka’s library and meet Miss Saeki. Nakata and she connect because they are both hollow people. They burn papers about Miss Saeki’s memories; Nakata becomes exhausted by all the paper burning and falls asleep. Hoshino try’s to wake the old man the next morning but to no avail, Nakata is dead.
Literary Analysis
We have so many questions but even more are left unanswered. In Kafka on the Shore, our main character, Kafka, asks two questions frequently; is that my sister or could it be my mother, and where did my mother and sister go and for what reason? In Kafka on the Shore, there is the theme of loss of innocence. Loss of innocence is whenever you are no longer ignorant to certain things, but mostly referring to the child like innocence of ignorance. In the story the two main characters, Kafka and Nakata, have both lost their innocence but in different ways. Although Kafka is a teenager that acts like an adult and Nakata, though an adult has a mind of a child, they are both innocent.
Kafka is a child living in an adult’s world. When we are first introduced to Kafka we are told that he is running away as soon as he turns fifteen. Soon after we are told by Kafka's friend that Kafka must be the strongest fifteen years old in the world. Though Kafka does become the strongest fifteen year old in the world he must sacrifice something for that, his innocence. While in America children are looked after by our parents until after our education, in Japan you are considered a full adult at 18 (BBC). Although we see Kafka as a normal teenage boy with his desire for women and sexual wants he has matured to be an adult. When someone reaches adulthood they lose their child-like innocence and ignorance and trade it in for knowledge. Kafka has traded his child-like innocence so that he could escape his father. Due to Kafka living on his own now we see how much he has grown into a full adult. Though Kafka still has his ignorance to some things he can already function as an adult. For example Kafka is good at managing and saving his money, knowing who to talk to and who will get him sent home, and not only is he caring for his knowledge by reading at the library but he cares for his body bfgjfy eating every day and working out, ensuring his promise to be the strongest fifteen year old in the world. In the end, Kafka has lost his innocence by trading it in for the wonders of adulthood and freedom.