The Sea and Poison

The Sea and Poison was the first Japanese book to confront the problem of individual responsibility in wartime, painting a searing picture of the human race's capacity for inhumanity. At the outset of this powerful story we find a Doctor Suguro in a backwater of modern-day Tokyo practicing expert medicine in a dingy office. He is haunted by his past experience and it is that past which the novel unfolds. During the war Dr. Suguro serves his internship in a hospital where the senior staff is more interested in personal career-building than in healing. He is induced to assist in a horrifying vivisection of a POW. "What is it that gets you," one of his colleagues asks. "Killing that prisoner? The conscience of man, is that it?"

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 04/17/1992
ISBN: 9780811211987
Pages: 175
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.95h x 5.33w x 0.47d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 03/09/1992