Politics & Power Quote by Kenzaburo Oe

There is a quiet provocation in Oe's careful phrasing: the sentence is built like a diplomatic memo, but it smuggles in a moral challenge. "Criticisms levelled against Japan" makes the pressure sound procedural, almost impersonal, as if history itself were filing a complaint. Then comes the loaded pivot: the demand that Japan "offer more military forces" in order to "keep" and "restore" peace. Oe leaves the official vocabulary intact, letting its contradictions do the damage.

The context is postwar Japan's unresolved bargain with itself. Article 9's pacifist promise, the U.S.-Japan security umbrella, and the Cold War-to-post-Cold War shift all created a recurring question: is Japan a responsible global actor if it won't deploy troops, or is restraint the responsibility? Oe, a writer who persistently worried at the ethical scars of Hiroshima and nationalism, hears the phrase "more active role" as a euphemism. It's the language of normalization: turning a country defined by demilitarization into one that behaves "normally" again, with all the risks that word carries in Japan.

Subtextually, the quote stages an argument about who gets to define peace. "United Nations forces" is meant to confer legitimacy, but Oe is attentive to how legitimacy can launder coercion. By reporting the criticism rather than endorsing it, he creates a space for skepticism: if peace must be "restored" by armies, whose peace was broken, and by whom? The sentence works because it mimics the bureaucratic voice that sells war as civic duty, then invites the reader to notice the sales pitch.