Analysis Of Oda's 'Stomping On Father'

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Oda depicts Corporal Kon, who insists on pronouncing his name in the Japanese manner rather than the Korean equivalent ‘Kim,’as determined to beat the Japanese at their own game by proving that he is the best soldier in the regiment. It was unusual for Koreans to be inducted on active duty with the Japanese forces. Instead, most were civilian employees required to perform labor for the military. Many of the so-called ‘Japanese’ prisoners during the first years of the war were in fact Korean laborers, mustered in their villages and sent to the islands of the Pacific to build airfields or harbor facilities. Kon, however, insists that he is a Japanese soldier, even though he comes from ‘the peninsula.’ Donald Keene’s translation and analysis of Oda’s novella illustrates the modus operandi of Oda’s penchant for in-between interstitial characters, trickster figure’s, and those who do not neatly fit into stereotypical typecasts. Oda breaks conventions, explores taboos and most importantly transcends simplistic black and white dichotomies so prevalent in our daily lives.
One of Oda’s most successful novellasis ‘“Aboji” o fumu’ [Stomping on Father, 1996], about his Korean in-laws, and he received the 24th Kawabata Yasunari Prize for Literature in 1997 for this very personal story.
Aboji and Omoni are ‘Koreans residents in Japan from the South.’ Yet it is complicated to separate each into their respective political categories and I have no intention of discussing this and that about

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