War & Peace Quote by Kenzaburo Oe

Oe’s sentence is deceptively calm, almost bureaucratic, and that’s the point: it captures how postwar Japan tried to turn catastrophe into a moral reset by choosing an abstract ideal - “eternal peace” - as a national north star. The phrasing “chose the principle” does a lot of work. It suggests agency, a deliberate selection, yet it also hints at the pressure and choreography behind that choice: occupation reforms, the new constitution’s famous pacifist clause, the need to re-enter the world cleansed of militarist legitimacy. “Chose” can mean embraced, but it can also mean accepted because the alternatives were politically impossible.

The subtext sits in the phrase “basis of morality.” Oe is not merely praising pacifism; he’s probing the danger of outsourcing ethics to a single grand principle. When a society treats peace as moral bedrock, it can become both a genuine commitment and a convenient alibi: a way to avoid grappling with what the war was, who enabled it, and what responsibility looks like beyond renunciation. “Rebirth after the War” carries a faintly religious charge, evoking purification and renewal, while quietly asking: rebirth for whom, and at what cost to memory?

Coming from Oe - a writer obsessed with postwar identity, democratic fragility, and the stories nations tell to survive - the line reads as both recognition and warning. Peace is framed not as a natural condition but as a constructed narrative, powerful enough to rebuild a country, and slippery enough to let uncomfortable truths slide out of frame.