"My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity"
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Oe’s line refuses the easy tourist story of Japan as either hyper-modern miracle or timeless shrine. By calling the country “split between two opposite poles of ambiguity,” he suggests a society forced to live in a permanent double exposure: Western-style modernization layered over older structures that never fully disappeared, and neither layer offering a stable identity you can point to with confidence.
The phrase “one hundred and twenty years” is doing quiet historical work. It anchors the observation in the Meiji opening and the headlong national project that followed: industrialization, empire, defeat, U.S. occupation, the economic boom. Oe’s implication is that modernization isn’t a completed chapter but a long hangover. The clock matters because it rebuts the myth that Japan’s postwar transformation was sudden, clean, and purely successful. It was sustained, coerced at times, and culturally costly.
“Opposite poles” sounds like a neat binary, yet Oe sabotages the neatness with “ambiguity.” He’s describing extremes that don’t clarify; they blur. Tradition vs. progress, pacifism vs. militarist memory, group harmony vs. individual conscience, technological confidence vs. spiritual or moral dislocation. The split isn’t just social; it’s psychological, a national self that can argue both sides with equal sincerity.
Coming from Oe, whose work is haunted by war responsibility, American influence, and postwar democratic ideals tested by real suffering (including his writing on disability through his son), the intent is less diagnosis than provocation. He’s warning that “modernisation” can be a story a country tells to avoid confronting what it has been, and what it still is.
The phrase “one hundred and twenty years” is doing quiet historical work. It anchors the observation in the Meiji opening and the headlong national project that followed: industrialization, empire, defeat, U.S. occupation, the economic boom. Oe’s implication is that modernization isn’t a completed chapter but a long hangover. The clock matters because it rebuts the myth that Japan’s postwar transformation was sudden, clean, and purely successful. It was sustained, coerced at times, and culturally costly.
“Opposite poles” sounds like a neat binary, yet Oe sabotages the neatness with “ambiguity.” He’s describing extremes that don’t clarify; they blur. Tradition vs. progress, pacifism vs. militarist memory, group harmony vs. individual conscience, technological confidence vs. spiritual or moral dislocation. The split isn’t just social; it’s psychological, a national self that can argue both sides with equal sincerity.
Coming from Oe, whose work is haunted by war responsibility, American influence, and postwar democratic ideals tested by real suffering (including his writing on disability through his son), the intent is less diagnosis than provocation. He’s warning that “modernisation” can be a story a country tells to avoid confronting what it has been, and what it still is.
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| Topic | Deep |
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