Japanese and Soviet war literature: representing one trauma

Abstract

This article examines the main trends in the development of military prose about the Second World War in the USSR and Japan. Having, in general, a traumatic experience of participation in the Second World War, the status of the aggressor country and the victorious country predetermined the representation of the War in the literature of both countries. Nevertheless, both national literatures note similar traumatic narratives (for example, the Blockade and Hiroshima), as well as a common anti-militarist pathos. As a result, this article demonstrates that the tracks of development of Japanese and Soviet literature were mutually directed: if the dominance of traumatic discourse is increasing in Soviet literature, then the Japanese, on the contrary, demonstrated the overcoming of traumatic discourse