Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka

Author:Akiyuki Nosaka
Language: eng
Format: epub

References

[1] A famous scholar of ancient China who reputedly studied by the light of fireflies.

Translator's Notes

When Nosaka Akiyuki received the 58th Naoki Prize in 1968 for "A Grave of Fireflies" and "America Hi/iki," he stated in his acceptance speech that "everything that went into the make-up of my person today can be found in the air raids, the war ruins, and the black market." Nosaka, who was born in 1930, classified himself as a member of the "war ruins-black-market sect," those writers and thinkers born in the period between 1929 and 1931. Too young to be drafted into the army yet too valuable as workers to be al-lowed refuge in the country, people of this age group spent their formative teen-age years experiencing the terrors of the air raids and the chaos of the early postwar period. No other work more graphically describes the profound effect this period had on Nosaka’s character and writings than "A Grave of Fireflies." While essentially a work of fiction, this 1967 short story comes closer than any of his other writings on the subject to telling what actually happened to 15-year old Nosaka in those terrible summer days of 1945.

Like Seita in the story, Nosaka was a junior high school student in Kobe when that city was hit by the B29 air raids. His home was destroyed by incendiary bombs and both his adopted parents were killed in the June 5 attack. He and his sister, then 16 months, moved to the home of a distant relative in the Manchitani area of Kobe, where she, like the older Setsuko in the story, died of malnutrition. Nosaka has related that he too washed the rash-covered body of his sister in the sea, and that he too released fireflies into his sister’s mosquito net to provide a flicker of light in that blackened out world.

Nosaka, of course, survived, and while the events in the story may revolve around true incidents, the characters, in particular Seita and Setsuko, have been molded and to some extent idealized by the more than 20 years these memories have been nurtured in the author’s mind. Nosaka has admitted strong feelings of guilt for running away from his home during the air raid and for showing less concern than Seita for the care of his weakened younger sister. That Seita dies is not so much to provide a convenient ending for the story as to emphasize his innocence and hero-ism, characteristics Nosaka feels that he him self lacked. And that Setsuko is made older than the author’s real sister, at an age where she can be aware of the destruction and death surrounding her, makes her an even more plaintive and tragic figure. One writer has said that "A Grave of Fireflies" is Nosaka’s requiem to his sister; it is also his most poignant love tragedy.

The other story for which Nosaka received the Naoki Prize, "America Hijiki," is a humorous description of a middle-aged man’s disconcerted thoughts and actions when his wife invites a visiting American couple to stay at their home.

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