Imaginary Death

A man dies. He dies because he must—because without his death, there is no story, and, in the end, no history itself. So begins Mariko Nagai’s Imaginary Death, a creative nonfiction book that examines how the author’s grandfather, an ordinary man born in a small village in the early 20th century, is...

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التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
المؤلف الرئيسي: Nagai, Mariko Nagai
التنسيق: Online
اللغة:الإنجليزية
منشور في: punctum books 2026
الموضوعات:
الوصول للمادة أونلاين:https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171564
الوسوم: إضافة وسم
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author Nagai, Mariko Nagai
author_browse Nagai, Mariko Nagai
author_facet Nagai, Mariko Nagai
author_sort Nagai, Mariko Nagai
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description A man dies. He dies because he must—because without his death, there is no story, and, in the end, no history itself. So begins Mariko Nagai’s Imaginary Death, a creative nonfiction book that examines how the author’s grandfather, an ordinary man born in a small village in the early 20th century, is unmade and remade into a perfect Japanese Imperial Soldier by the era he was born into. In the kaleidoscope composed of archival documents, letters, journals, research, interviews, and photographs, Imaginary Death traces the life of a man who fought and died for the empire, whose death, obscured by lack of documentation, must be composited of many possible ways men could die in Papua New Guinea. Only forty out of four thousand men from the regimental unit survived by the end of the repatriation in 1946: his was one small death out of many. In the tradition of James Agee and Walker Evans’s seminal work on the Great Depression Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Imaginary Death is a work that is part meditation, part history, and part fragments of memory that tell a story of a Japanese soldier’s life and death during World War II. Ultimately, Imaginary Death is a textual landscape of imagination, fact, history, and dreams all intersecting to create a psychological terrain that is not limited in the same way as history or nonfiction books, but is rather a new imaginative cartography, no less real than history itself.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1715642026-02-12T10:39:04Z Imaginary Death Nagai, Mariko Nagai Social Science / Men's Studies thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups::JBSF2 Gender studies: men and boys A man dies. He dies because he must—because without his death, there is no story, and, in the end, no history itself. So begins Mariko Nagai’s Imaginary Death, a creative nonfiction book that examines how the author’s grandfather, an ordinary man born in a small village in the early 20th century, is unmade and remade into a perfect Japanese Imperial Soldier by the era he was born into. In the kaleidoscope composed of archival documents, letters, journals, research, interviews, and photographs, Imaginary Death traces the life of a man who fought and died for the empire, whose death, obscured by lack of documentation, must be composited of many possible ways men could die in Papua New Guinea. Only forty out of four thousand men from the regimental unit survived by the end of the repatriation in 1946: his was one small death out of many. In the tradition of James Agee and Walker Evans’s seminal work on the Great Depression Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Imaginary Death is a work that is part meditation, part history, and part fragments of memory that tell a story of a Japanese soldier’s life and death during World War II. Ultimately, Imaginary Death is a textual landscape of imagination, fact, history, and dreams all intersecting to create a psychological terrain that is not limited in the same way as history or nonfiction books, but is rather a new imaginative cartography, no less real than history itself. 2026-02-12T10:39:02Z 2026-02-12T10:39:02Z 2025 book 9781685712372 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171564 eng punctum books 12970da4-0116-4486-b8be-fc9756703ab1 9781685712372 302 open access
spellingShingle Social Science / Men's Studies
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups::JBSF2 Gender studies: men and boys
Nagai, Mariko Nagai
Imaginary Death
title Imaginary Death
title_full Imaginary Death
title_fullStr Imaginary Death
title_full_unstemmed Imaginary Death
title_short Imaginary Death
title_sort imaginary death
topic Social Science / Men's Studies
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups::JBSF2 Gender studies: men and boys
topic_facet Social Science / Men's Studies
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups::JBSF2 Gender studies: men and boys
url https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/171564
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