Men from Manchuria and Women in Japan after the Asia-Pacific War：The Meaning of “Meaninglessness” in Abe Kobo’s Two “The Wall” Novels

It is widely known that in his two novels, “At the Guidepost at the End of the Road” (1948) and “The Wall – The Crime of S. Karma” (1951), Abe Kobo depicted the main characters’ anguish after the Japanese defeat in the Asia-Pacific war as the result of “meaninglessness”. He came to this perspective on the basis of struggling with this feeling in his own life. This article analyzes the female Japanese characters, who form a contrast with the main male Japanese characters, in order to explore the question of why this sense of meaninglessness came about. In these novels, Japanese female characters are represented as those who cure the distress men feel because of the latter’s awareness of their responsibility for the aggressive war that took place, and because of their hedonic enjoyment of the liberated society after the war, which these male characters experience as “meaningful” as it allows them to not reflect on the war. The contrasting women characters reflect the social conditions at the time the story was written. Japanese women were not accused of war crimes, nor were they responsible for the subordinate female gender roles which persisted before the war. As a result, the female characters are free of the sense of meaninglessness, and they form a contrast with Japanese male characters who feel anguish at their awareness of their responsibility for the war, and their resultant sense of meaninglessness.