Nomonhan Incident and "Henkyo, Kinkyo" written by Haruki Murakami

Recently, I watched a TV program, "NHK Special" featured 'Nomonhan Incident'.
While watching the program, I remembered that once I read a book by Haruki Murakami, which was written about his travel to Nomonhan. The title of the book is "Henkyo, Kinkyo" (Outland, Nearby land), which contains "Graveyard of irons in Nomonhan".

 

 

Murakami saw a photo of ”Nomonhan Incident” in a history book when he was an elementary school student. Since then, he couldn't get the image out of his mind for some reason.

 

Later, he read books about 'Nomonhan Incident' when he found ones but the number
of them wasn't so many. Then, he lived in America for several years. At that time, surprisingly, he found old Japanese books about 'Nomonhan Incident' in the library at Princeton University, where he belonged to. So he continued to read the books there, too.

 

Murakami says that he has an extreme interest in the incident, perhaps because the war was very Japanese in a sense.

 

In the "Graveyard of irons in Nomonhan", the brutal way to Nomonhan, the vast plains in Mongolia, where trenches and tanks remain, his terrifying experience due to things that he took back, are described in detail, which are like watching a documentary.

 

Murakami's belief about the war, of course, was worth reading, but also the depiction of a small female wolf's eyes prepared to die, which was shot by their guide, a Mongolian military man, was so realistic and sad that it made me cry.
*It is said that, without fail, Mongolians kill wolves when they find one.
(H.S)