This collection of essays on the artistic production of members of the yakeato generation, people who as adolescents lived through the time of the incendiary and atomic bombings of Japan and the subsequent ruins, productively draws our attention to the impact of this group on arts and politics across the postwar period. In a contribution that encapsulates the concerns of the book, Carol Hayes assesses the life and films of the director Kuroki Kazuo, showing how his generation came into being, processed its wartime experiences, and struggled to express itself. By placing Kuroki in conversation with his contemporaries, the film critic Satō Tadao and the playwright Inoue Hisashi, Hayes conveys the sense of a group seared together in war, especially in terms of the powerlessness experienced by boys on the losing side.
Women of the yakeato generation had somewhat different concerns. Barbara Hartley's insightful reading of two short stories, Sono...
