because he had already run away. The "acting executor of the will" agrees with the mother, and from her words it appears that she is the narrator's wife. Confronted with his mother's version of events, the narrator retreats further into his own world. He wears a set of earphones as well as the goggles, and listens to a recording of the cantata while singing "Happy Days". He imagines himself back at the moment of his father's death, crawling towards a father figure so that, "his blood and his tears will be wiped away". Response John Nathan, in the introduction to his 1977 translation of the work, calls it, "Oe's most difficult and disturbing work to date". Like other commentators, he sees the novel as a response to, and parody of, the militarism of Yukio Mishima, whose failed coup and suicide had taken place in 1970, the same year in which Oe sets his story. He ascribes its power to the tension between the "anger and longing" which he finds in the author's work. Susan Napier expands on this interpretation, seeing the narrator as feeling the desire to escape from his adult responsibilities back into childhood, and feeling resentment towards his mother who prevents him from doing so. The difficulty of the novel can be ascribed to a series of disruptive narrative techniques. Episodes are related out of order, repeated and altered in each re-telling. Oe also blurs the distinctions between the different characters, by the fluid use of pronouns and the omission of quotation marks. Oe uses the discussions between the narrator and the executor (towards the end, including contributions from the narrator's mother) to include criticism of the main narrative within the story. The executor asks about parts of the story omitted by the narrator, and suggests that he is hiding "unpleasant memories... creating the bloated feeling" Her comments also prompt observations from the narrator on his own story: when she questions his continual use of the term "a certain party" instead of "father", he responds that, "To make someone sound like an imaginary figure can be a way of debasing him, but it can also be a way of exalting him into a kind of idol". Michiko Wilson amplifies this latter point, arguing that this terminology furthers the identification of the father with the emperor, as he is traditionally not referred to by name. The identification of the