World War II

World War II enters Tengo’s family history through his father’s precarious migration to Manchuria and his narrow escape from the Soviet invasion in August 1945. The war’s end does not simply close a chapter: it leaves the father displaced and impoverished, setting the conditions for the life Tengo later experiences.

The journey to Manchuria

The year the war ended, Tengo’s father was repatriated from Manchuria without a penny. A third son in a farming family in Tohoku, he had joined the government’s “Manchurian and Mongolian colonies” program with fellow provincial men. They did not believe the official slogan that Manchuria was “a paradise governed by virtue,” or expect the vast, fertile land and prosperity it promised. They were poor and hungry at home, and the economic depression offered few prospects even in the cities; going to Manchuria seemed their only chance to survive.

After basic training in case they needed to use weapons, and rudimentary instruction in farming conditions, the men said goodbye to Japan with three cries of “Banzai.” They travelled from Dairen by train to the borderlands of Manchuria and Mongolia, where they received land, agricultural tools, and a rifle. The fields were rocky and poor, the winters froze the ground, and food grew so scarce that they sometimes ate stray dogs. Government aid helped them survive the first years, but did not make the settlement the promised paradise.

The invasion and escape

In August 1945, just as the settlers began to glimpse an easier life, Soviet forces renounced the neutrality treaty and invaded Manchukuo. With the war in Europe over, much of the Soviet military had moved to the Far East along the Siberian Railway and prepared to cross the border. A government official secretly warned Tengo’s father that the weakened Kwantung Army could not resist and that he should abandon his possessions and escape as quickly as possible.

When he learned that Soviet troops had crossed the frontier, the father rode a horse to the station and boarded the second-to-last train bound for Dairen. Of all his companions, he alone managed to reach Japan safely that year. The escape, achieved by acting on a private warning and leaving everything behind, turns the large military event into a particular story of survival amid the collapse of Japan’s Manchurian project.

Aftermath and family history

The father’s return did not bring security. After the war he went to Tokyo and tried black-market trading and an apprenticeship in carpentry, without success; he could barely feed himself. In autumn 1947, while making a delivery for a sake merchant in Asakusa, he happened to meet the same official who had warned him in Manchuria. Back in Japan, that man had resumed his position at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Seeing the father’s difficulty finding regular work, he suggested that he become a collector of NHK fees and offered to use his connections to help him get the job.

This wartime history supplies the background to the later routine that binds Tengo to his father. The father’s impoverished return and subsequent work help explain the circumstances behind the compulsory Sunday collection rounds, during which Tengo was made to accompany him regardless of illness. The history connects a national upheaval to an intimate inheritance: the father survives the invasion, but the conditions of that survival shape the demanding life imposed on his son.