The Right Stuff: The Kamikaze Pilot in Kerri Sakamoto’sOne Hundred Million Heartsand Ruth Ozeki’sA Tale for the Time Being

Over the course of the last decade, novelists based in the United States and Canada have offered the first serious depictions of kamikaze pilots to appear in Anglophone literary writing. Hitherto, this topic was confined to the medium of pulp fiction, comic books, war films, and the leftover propaganda materials of World War II. Literature and area studies scholars likewise neglected to explore the topic although a rising number of translated documents devoted to kamikaze testimonies have alerted novelists to the value of this source material. This article recalls the history of the kamikaze pilots, summarizes the treatment of kamikaze pilots from a cultural studies perspective, and turns to the question of how translated epistolary source material can inform readings of Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts (2003) and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013). This article also explores how or if this topic intersects with literary and scholarly trends in the post-9/11 era, paying particular attention to the ethical issues attendant to comparative modalities.