Customer Reviews

Death March on Mount Hakkoda (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature)

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A documentary novel about the distress in Japanese Army's training march in the snowing Mount Hakkoda in Aomori, in northern part of Japan. The training took place a few years before Russo-Japanese War broke out, to secure the route in case Russian invasion. Two teams were formed, in a kind of contest, and one team with small members and good preparation got through it. But another team got lost in the midst of Hakkoda and out of 210 members, only some ten could survived.

Non-fictional approach based on the facts give readers really heavy impressions.

One of the most impressed part was a short episode at the end of the novel. After the distress, the sound of hundreds soldiers returned to the base every night. One night, one survived leader ordered to the sound to got rest, then it stoppedc

Nitta Jiro is famous for his novel of mountaineering.

I read this book about a year after I had visited the North of Japan in autumn to walk along Oirase and take a hot bath in one of the hot springs near Mt Hakkoda (both of which are highly recommended). Maybe my view of the area would have been rather different had I read this entertaining but fictionalised account of one of the greatest peacetime military blunders.

The book does not really explore the characters (some real, some fiction) in any great depth (nor are they totally convincing) but the factual basis of the story makes one wince with each new act of arrogance and folly as it is exposed in the narrative. The frailties of the major protagonists are ruthlessly revealed in a strictly hierarchical society - a theme explored subsequently by - among others - Chie Nakane.