Ooka S. Ogni na ravnine [Lights on the plain], Pr. s yap. E. Galekina, Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2007, 285 p. 4000 copies. (p) ISBN 5 - 9524 - 2634 - 4

In every country that took part in the World War, there was someone who spoke about its perfect non-paradism and that the main combat operations take place not on the battlefields indicated on the staff maps, but inside the belligerent person. For the Germans, this is Erich Maria Remarque, for the French, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and for the Japanese, this is probably Shohei Ooka.

In the novel "Lights on the Plain", which tells about the defeat of Japanese troops in the Philippines at the end of World War II, there is almost no visible World War II. There is only the tropical island of Leyte: American bombers occasionally fly over it in the sky, Philippine guerrilla warning lights light up in the fields, the corpses of Japanese soldiers lie on the roadsides, and Private Tamura, who, in general, is no longer a private, walks along these roads. The Japanese army, whose main task now is to somehow get themselves at least some food, does not need a tuberculosis soldier with pulmonary hemorrhage. A hospital that lives solely on patient rations doesn't need a tuberculosis soldier with pulmonary hemorrhage and no potatoes. And I don't want to use a hand grenade - on the advice of a caring platoon commander - to die like a soldier of the Imperial army. So Timura goes no one knows where and why, no longer paying attention to the fact that he is terribly feverish, and for the first time noticing the amazing forests of the Philippine Islands around him. "Infantry is always being moved from place to place depending on strategic plans and goals. The soldier loses touch with nature, forests, hills and rivers become something devoid of true meaning for him. A sense of the absurdity of everything that is happening forms the basis of the soldier's existence, becomes the source of his selflessness and heroic carelessness. But if fear, cowardice, or a tendency to self - reflection break through the protective shell, then something even more meaningless for a person full of life will rise to the surface-a premonition of death."

And if only it was just a premonition of death - but the above conclusion comes to Tamura at the very beginning of his mad journey. He has yet to discover in himself the whole terrible set of thoughts, feelings and desires that arise in an absolutely free person in a senseless war, which no "Attention!" or " Attack!", and in general no need will block out the horror and absurdity of what is happening around him, and he will counteract this horror and absurdity. now he can only use his own personal principles and moral values. But war is war: some principles hold up, some don't. It turns out that you can laugh when you watch your comrades being shot at. It turns out that you can kill a woman just because she screamed in fear when she saw you. And then, before you know it, your life has already been reduced to a furious attempt to prevent yourself from eating human flesh. And then... Private Tamura is sure that his story ended well in the end, but such stories don't end well or badly. They just exist, just like the Second World War with its glory and shame, inseparable from each other.

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