H. PAUL VARLEY

In this last chapter of his book, Japanese Culture, H. Paul Varley
discusses the literary work of Dazai Osamu, Tanizaki Junichirō,
Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kōkō, Ōe Kenzaburō,
and several other lesser-known writers in the context of post-World
War II Japanese literary movements. In addition to an upsurge
in literary production in the postwar years, film also became "one
of the most important media for the transmission of Japanese
culture to the West" during this period. The work of Mizoguchi
Kenji, Kurosawa Akira, Ozu Yasujirō, three of the most famous
directors, is discussed in some detail by Varley. Finally, short dis-
cussions of shingeki (modern theater), architecture, and the rise
of the new religions (shinko shakyo), complete the picture of
culture in postwar Japan.

After more than three and a half years of fighting, during which its early
victories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia were inexorably reversed, Japan
finally acceded to the ultimatum of the Allied powers from Potsdam in July
1945, and in August surrendered unconditionally. The last agonies of the war
produced, on one side, the horror of suicidal air attacks by kamikaze pilots --
who were exhorted to recreate the glorious defense of the homeland by "divine
winds;" directed against the Mongol invaders of the thirteenth century -- and,
on the other side, the unspeakable holocaust of atomic destruction in the
American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In an unprecedented radio broadcast on August 15 (August 14 in the
United States), the emperor informed his subjects that "the war situation has

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