Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on a range of memoirs, art, poetry, and contemporary records, this title reconstructs their experience of captivity, return, and encounter with a postwar Japan that now seemed as alien as it had once been familiar.
Trade Review"Barshay provides a chilling account of the coercive power of the state of individuals who nonetheless mature sufficiently to speak for themselves. The Gods Left First is a rich and deeply moving book." -- Shu Cao International Affairs "An intensely personal book." -- Laura Hein Journal of Japanese Studies 41, no. 1 "The Gods Left First is so well written that there were times I found myself engrossed as if reading a novel or viewing a film." Monumenta Nipponica
Table of ContentsList of Maps and Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Names and Terms I. Prologue The Gods Left First Sources and Method II. The Siberian Internment in History The Prince's Tale The Soviet-Japanese War Hot War to Cold The Soviet-Japanese Conflict: Prehistory into History Toward Internment The Internment Remembered III. Kazuki Yasuo and the Profane World of the Gulag Icons of the Profane The Red Corpse "My Vision Broadened Tenfold" The "Siberia Style" From Image to Text The Responsibility of the Artist "The Beauty only I Can Grasp" IV. Knowledge Painfully Acquired: Takasugi Ichiro and the "Democratic Movement" in Siberia Thank You, Iosif Vissarionovich! A Humanist Interprets the Gulag Siberia, School of Democracy Ogawa Goro Becomes Takasugi Ichiro In the Shadow of the Northern Lights The Gate of Hell Toward Epiphany Toward Return Knowledge Painfully Acquired V. Ishihara Yoshiro: "My Best Self Did Not Return" Prologue: Ishihara Yoshiro and Viktor Frankl The Survivor's Question The Primitive Accumulation of Memory The Life before the Death Into the Gulag At Lowest Ebb, Stirrings Kano Buichi, Enigma Was this Domoi? VI. Coda The People Stalin Didn't Care About "A War to Live": Fujiwara Tei's The Shooting Stars Are Alive The Meaning and Message of Survival Appendix: How Many? Bibliography Index
