"Even though we now have the half-century-old new Constitution, there is a popular sentiment of support for the old one that lives on in reality in some quarters"
About this Quote
Oe’s line lands like a polite sentence with a serrated edge: “half-century-old new Constitution” is a linguistic trapdoor. The phrase makes modernity sound stale, implying that what was once framed as a fresh democratic break has already calcified into something merely procedural. By calling it “new” and immediately aging it, Oe punctures the comforting national story that postwar Japan cleanly reset itself in 1947 and moved on.
The real charge is in the second half. “Popular sentiment” suggests something mass, emotional, even folkloric; “lives on in reality in some quarters” narrows the blame without softening it. Oe is pointing at the stubborn afterlife of the Meiji-era constitutional mindset: emperor-centered sovereignty, reverence for hierarchy, the belief that state authority should feel paternal and unquestionable. The subtext is that constitutional text is not the same as constitutional culture. You can rewrite the rules; you can’t instantly rewrite the reflexes.
Context matters. Oe writes as a postwar moral witness who watched Japan negotiate its pacifist identity under Article 9 while facing recurrent pressure to “normalize” military power, revise civic education, and rehabilitate symbols of prewar nationalism. His phrasing implies a country living with a double exposure: the official democratic frame and the shadow image of the old order, still developing in pockets of politics, media, and memory.
It works because it refuses melodrama. Oe doesn’t accuse; he diagnoses. The understatement is the accusation.
The real charge is in the second half. “Popular sentiment” suggests something mass, emotional, even folkloric; “lives on in reality in some quarters” narrows the blame without softening it. Oe is pointing at the stubborn afterlife of the Meiji-era constitutional mindset: emperor-centered sovereignty, reverence for hierarchy, the belief that state authority should feel paternal and unquestionable. The subtext is that constitutional text is not the same as constitutional culture. You can rewrite the rules; you can’t instantly rewrite the reflexes.
Context matters. Oe writes as a postwar moral witness who watched Japan negotiate its pacifist identity under Article 9 while facing recurrent pressure to “normalize” military power, revise civic education, and rehabilitate symbols of prewar nationalism. His phrasing implies a country living with a double exposure: the official democratic frame and the shadow image of the old order, still developing in pockets of politics, media, and memory.
It works because it refuses melodrama. Oe doesn’t accuse; he diagnoses. The understatement is the accusation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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