قصة الكتاب :
Kōdansha (Kōdansha Bunko), 2004. 328 pp. ¥590. ISBN 978-4-
06-273989-4.
Asada Jirō
Born in Tokyo in 1951. Received the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for New
Writers in 1995 for Metoro ni notte [Riding the Subway], the Naoki
Prize in 1997 for Poppoya [trans. The Stationmaster], the Chūōkōron
Bungei Prize in 2006 and the Shiba Ryōtarō Prize in 2007 for Ohara
meshimase [Slit Your Belly], and the Mainichi Publishing Culture
Award in 2010 for Owarazaru natsu [Endless Summer]. Was appointed
president of the Japan P.E.N. Club in 2011.

The role of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces in relation to the Constitution and recently
enacted security legislation has drawn a range of debate and come under the
political spotlight. However, there are few vivid and detailed literary depictions of
the thoughts and lives of those who serve in the SDF.
In this sense, Asada Jirō’s Hohei no honryō, a collection of linked short stories,
is a rare and valuable work that describes the daily life of SDF members. Asada
is a Japanese literary heavyweight known for his many bestselling historical novels
and currently serves as president of the Japan P.E.N. Club. He also served in
the SDF in his young days before becoming a novelist, though, and this book is
based on his own experiences and observations. The setting is the 1970s, when the
SDF was very different from now. At the time, “wages were excessively low and
the working environment entirely awful,” so that those who entered as volunteers
included numerous “oddballs” and “young people who, for whatever reason, had
nowhere else to go.” At the same time, many of the senior officers had been members
of the Imperial Army before 1945, and insidious old military practices remained
in use.
Asada applies his characteristically skillful storytelling to this material, adding
plentiful touches of humor and human feeling, to brilliantly portray the difficulties
SDF members faced and their pride in their work. (NM)