The Twilight World

What is Herzog without his trademark staccato delivery? Get the audiobook.

The Twilight World is the story of Hiroo Onoda's ongoing guerilla war long after WWII ends, but it's not a true story and Herzog tells you that up front. If you're interested in the facts you shouldn't read this. This is Herzog's dream of the meaning of Onoda's alternate reality opposed to the world that has moved on from the war he's still fighting. Herzog makes the Chuangzi line about the man waking from a dream who doesn't know if he dreamt he was a butterfly or is the butterfly dreaming he is a man central to the narrative, but never mentions it directly. We follow Onoda and his compatriots POV as their version of reality is repeatedly tested, and Herzog lets show more him be a mouthpiece for the changing tides of history, the continual wars in Asia, the technological sweep of jet planes to satellites, attempted to be understood by a man frozen in time. We never dig deep into the ethical questions of the people who died, but get a heroic account where Onoda is simply respected if not revered after his fight ends, a symbol of the unwavering Japanese fighting spirit mythmaking that saturated their culture and almost prevented the surrender. The book ends in an almost Lynchian fever dream of images, which along with the idiosyncratic way Herzog looks at the world through this story reminds you that this isn't "based on a true story", but something that was revealed to him in a dream. show less

A little weird to read a fictionalization of a person who lived such an extreme life. This book consists almost entirely of psychological explorations of the reasons why a man would choose to carry on fighting a war for decades after it ended, despite every imaginable adversity and veritable evidence that it was over. There are also numerous passages where the historical figures it is based on are given specific, powerful dialogue, which I can only assume is based on absolutely no evidence and is an entire fabrication. It’s fitting that a book like this was written by a film director, as this treatment of the past is commonplace in that medium; and yet the obvious artifice of an actor delivering lines on a set signals this is a show more fabrication, no matter how closely the script follows the historical record. I’m less familiar with this conceit in literature, and it’s off-putting, especially when the author’s own life intersected with that of his subject, and as a reader, I have little knowledge of what actually happened going into the book. The natural question arises: how could Herzog ever hope to inhabit the mind frame of someone from such a specific culture as that of a soldier of Imperial Japan?

Thankfully this book is beautifully written. Herzog’s voiceovers for his documentaries have always mesmerized me, veering as they do between facts, conjecture, and the most wild fancies and speculation. Like those films, this book is imbued with a specific wonder at the world that makes a great artist.

Post-script: coming back a few weeks later to note down a story I came across while reading other information about Hiroo Onoda. After Onoda finally surrendered, he returned to Japan with a warm welcome. He was awarded a large amount of back pay which he at first refused, then donated to a Shinto shrine. He wrote a book about his experience on Lubang Island, which I can only assume was the main source of all the psychologizing in Herzog's book, which was very popular. He was called on to run for office by the Japanese right wing, though Onoda also turned that down. Eventually, fatigued by what he saw as Japan's ascendant materialism, he settled into a lifestyle where he would spend large parts of the year living with his brother on a cattle farm in Brazil. Eventually, he established a school for troubled Japanese youth to learn survival skills. He only died in 2014.

It's hard not to have a begrudging respect for this man, despite the violence he committed on the local population of Lubang Island for decades, which of course went completely unpunished. But I think the romanticization of the Japanese "code of honor" and bravery during WWII can often edge into a kind of orientalism - westerners can be so awed by the soldiers commitment to the war effort that they can forget the outrageous brutality the Japanese carried out on the populations of their colonized territory in the name a kind of racial superiority that is more similar to Nazi Aryanism than not. If we are to combat against the racialized dehumanization committed against Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps, or the propaganda depicting Japanese soldiers as subhuman pests or beasts, we must also reckon with the societal factors and war tactics that they built their empire upon. In this book, Herzog is notably agnostic on this point, and I think that's understandable - he was interested in the man, not the nation. But I do think there is a story from the same period of history that is instructive and gives a clearer frame of reference for the line of thinking that made both Onoda's incredible tenacity and his reception upon returning to Japan possible: that of Teruo Nakamura. Onoda was actually the second to last Japanese soldier to surrender, Nakamura beat his record by a few months, giving up in 1974. Nakamura was actually a member of the Taiwanese aboriginal tribe the Amis, Taiwan at that time still under Japanese colonial control. Having been stationed on an island in Indonesia when the Japanese surrendered, Nakamura lived a solitary life on the island for 30 years before he was discovered and decommissioned. He chose to be repatriated to Taiwan instead of Japan, logical considered that had been his home before the war. He was given a Chinese name which he only learned upon returning to Taiwan, and was initially ignored by both the Japanese and Taiwanese governments. To Japan, he was a colonial grunt who wasn't even Japanese; to the Taiwanese he was a collaborator with their former colonizers and aggressors in the war. In contrast to the lavish treatment given to Onoda upon his return to Japan, Nakamura was given a pittance in backpay equating to only a few hundred US dollars, and certainly no pomp and circumstance. The Taiwanese government and public worked together to donate money to Nakamura, perhaps seeing that the moral imperative to help this man fell upon them, the former colonial subjects of Nakamura's imperial employer. Nakamura died in 1979.

It's important to consider the treatment of these two soldiers 30 years after the war because it tells us a lot about the way we view history. Was it wrong for the Japanese to celebrate this man who was a kind of living fossil of the imperial era, a man who had killed innocent people in the name of an effort that was bloodcurdlingly brutal? Is it possible to revere historical figures for their bravery and commitment to the national cause, even when that cause has long been discredited? If the attraction of Onoda is based on his tenacity and sacrifice, why wasn't Nakamura afforded the same treatment? The clear answer is because he wasn't "really" Japanese. Thirty years after the fact, some of the same psychology that put the imperial system in place still held sway. I'm not here to demonize the Japanese - atrocities are committed by all sides in a war. Rather, I think the afterlife of this story can tell us as much as the story (as compelling as it is) that Herzog set down in this book. show less

It is not really surprising that one grows trust - issues after fighting 5 years of intense war.

So when Hiroo Onada, a Japanese officer on an endless guerrilla mission on the island of Lubang in the Philippines, is informed that Japan has surrendered and the conflict is over, he does not believe it and creeps even deeper in the jungle to continue the fight. For thirty more years...

Initially consisting of four soldiers, over the years the squad is reduced to a single person. One soldier surrenders in the fifties and walks out of the jungle. Two others are killed by Philippine troops trying to oust them out the forest. Only Onada keeps eluding all tentative of contact in the decades following the end of WW2.

Onoda will remain hidden until show more 21 February 1972, when Norio Suzuki, a young world-traveller, onto whom the soldier has stumbled in the forest, convinces the old man to come out of his hiding .

His is the story told in The Twilight World, the latest book by famous cinematographer Werner Herzog. Herzog has a penchant for exceptional characters, especially so if they are hidden, lost or trapped in the jungle. Suffice to remember his movies or documentaries featuring Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Dieter Dengler and Juliane Koepcke. And now with his recent novel, the Twilight World, he has added to these Hiroo Onoda.

The title of the book sounds even more dramatic in the original German: "Das Dämmern der Welt, like in the operatic word "Götterdammerung", a slow darkening, a closing out of the light, a creeping darkness preceding a full black-out.

When on tour in Tokyo in 1997, Herzog shocks his hosts, by preferring a meeting with the jungle rescapee instead of with their Emperor. According to the German, He and Onoda, both jungle - aficionados, connect easily and have long discussions. The soldier tells his story and the 100-page novel is Herzog interpretation of it. While clearly irenic in intention, the author sides with the loner; the point of view in the narrative is the one of the warrior. The peaceful inhabitants of the island, who fear the ghost in the forest are rarely mentioned, their perspective is omitted.

One can either mock or pity Onada for wasting away 30 years in the jungle. But the truth is more complex. Over the decades American war planes and warships kept flying over or passing the island. Unbeknownst to him, they are enroute to the next battlefields, the Korean and then the Vietnamese. Refusing to surrender, the old Japanese remains a danger for the isolated local civilians he encounters on the fringe of the jungle. And it is rather unfair from Herzog that he tells about the death of the two companions of Onada, killed in ambushes by Philippine soldiers and not about the 30 farmers the Japanese officer kills over the years, stealing their food and destroying their crops.

As long as one of the belligerent parties decides to continue the fight, and there is always one who does, the fight continues.

That is also Onoda's statement in a sentence that might be a blurb for a book on Human History.

"The truth is that War is never over. Only the locations of the battlefields change" show less

Herzog’s novel is much like many of his movies — a dramatic interpretation of the true story of an unusual and intense life.

This is the life of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese solider who defended a Pacific Island from the 1940s to the 1970s, not knowing that World War II had ended and that his mission was no longer relevant.

Onoda received his orders in 1944 to defend Lubang, an island in the Philippines, as the Japanese otherwise withdrew. The island had strategic value as a base and landing strip for the Pacific war. Onoda had a very small force of men, ultimately only himself, with which to defend the island by guerrilla measures until the Japanese army returned.

The Japanese army never returned, but Onoda performed his duty without show more reservation or question.

Guerrilla tactics enforced Onoda’s isolation from outside contact, including with local villages and farmers. For much of those first years, he commanded a small group of three other soldiers, learning how to survive and stay hidden in the jungle. They survived attacks and ambushes, they met the challenges of food and shelter, and they became masters, especially Onoda himself, in the art of stealth.

Herzog’s portrayal of Onoda is of a man living resolutely in an alternate reality. Onoda is absolutely convinced that the war continues, that every bit of evidence to the contrary is in fact confirmation of that fact.

A newspaper found on a trail contains too many advertisements to be real — the advertisements must hide the news that would reveal the course of the war. It is clearly a plant, to fool Onoda and the others into revealing themselves.

Planes flying over in the skies, actually planes like B-52s that are part of the war in Southeast Asia, are signs of the ongoing conflict in the Pacific.

Onoda’s world is unshakably bound by the war that frames his life. Everything is understood within those bounds. You can’t help but think of the convictions of conspiracy-believers in our present day, for whom every bit of evidence that contradicts their beliefs is turned on its head to confirm them.

An “alternate reality” still functions as a reality. Onoda lived in a “real” world, in terms of its effect. The jungle was real, the dangers were real, the imperatives of survival and stealth were all real. The terms by which he lived were real, in so far as they effectively bounded his experiences.

And his unshakable conviction kept that world solidly in place.

The sense of time within Onoda’s world is different. Nothing really changes, nothing marks time, and no events stamp distinctive dates of change. He lives as suspended in time.

And his world is microscopic and self-contained, sealed away from the vast real world around it. It’s a simplicity that complements the simplicity of Onoda’s purpose — those orders he was left with in 1944.

Herzog comes back repeatedly to the idea that Onoda feels as though he may be dreaming or living within some illusion. At times, Onoda even hopes that it will turn out so.
But the thing is that realizing that he is dreaming or living within an illusion (which is of course true) doesn’t relieve him of the reality of his life. Even if it is a dream or an illusion, it bounds his life and its meaning.

This theme is reminiscent of a number of Herzog’s films. There are the obsessives — Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Walter Steiner, Timothy Treadwell (“Grizzly Man”). There is something more and less admirable in these persons (all, like Onoda, based on real people). Their lives have intense, focused, and simple meaning — the city of gold, opera in the jungle, the flight of the ski-jumper, or life with the grizzly.

The other film that this book called to mind is Herzog’s Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Like Onoda, Kaspar Hauser lived in a microscopic alternate reality up until his discovery at the beginning of the film. He has been isolated from everything in the outside world — his world is bounded by the walls of the cellar in which he lives and by his one possession, his toy horse. For Hauser, Herzog’s story is focused on his re-entry rather than on his exile. With Onoda, it is the exile itself.

If you like Herzog’s films, you’re going to like this book. It’s written in the same rhythm — you can even hear Herzog’s distinctive, charismatic accent in it (I actually just checked to see that the audio version of the book is actually narrated by Herzog!). It has that same semi-poetic, dramatic tactile presence. show less

“The jungle does not recognize time.”

And Hiroo Onoda is the human embodiment of that statement! He is on Lubang Island in the Philippines at the end of World War II. But when the war ends, Onoda doesn’t believe it. And for the next 30 years, he conducts jungle warfare on the island, through the Korean War and into the Vietnam War! 30 flippin' years he continues to fight World War II!!! It's just an amazing story that seems impossible, but it isn't. I'm so blown away by it, I just keep telling everyone about what I read!
30 years...

For the man who made the stunning film “Aguirre, Wrath of God”, the story of Hiroo Onoda seems a logical point of fascination. Isn’t the image of Onoda fighting and waiting for Imperial Japan’s triumphant reconquest of a Philippine island for 29 years after the war ended, ignoring all signs and common sense that should have led him to halt, fighting against the damp and rot of dense jungle as much as anything, comparable to Aguirre’s demented doomed march through the South American jungle in search of a city of gold… both men lost in their heads, at the near extremes of physical human experience in dense inhospitable jungle (all the cliches of the “dark forest” dialed up even more intensely), all for something completely show more imaginary.

Herzog thus returns to this “twilight world” of sense/nonsense between civilization and madness. It is part documentary and part act of imagination. He seems taken with Onoda’s impressively near-precise effort to keep track of the calendar date, turning out to be only five days off after 29 years. It is evidence of an exercise of human rationality in the midst of something that otherwise points to insanity. This contrast is highlighted in other ways as well, such as Onoda discovering and working out the existence of a satellite orbiting Earth that appears a couple of decades into his life in the jungle, at the same time as he also questions if what he believes is reality could in fact be a dreamworld.

Unlike Herzog’s fictional creation of Aguirre, the real Onoda is ultimately able to return to civilization and the world of everyday rationality. It would have been interesting to delve into that return, but Herzog again is only focused on the human experience of that in-between twilight world, and its fascinations. show less

This is Werner Herzog's telling of the fascinating true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese World War II soldier who defended Lubang Island in the Philippines for decades after the end of the war, unaware that the war was over. Herzog met Onoda and, over the course of many meetings, learned the complete story of Onoda's experience. In this book Herzog takes what Onoda shared with him first-hand and depicts Onoda's decades-long campaign with such detail and imbues it with such atmosphere that the reader can feel the humidity of the jungle, see every drop of rain on every leaf, and hear the slopping of military boots trudging through mud.

Onoda's story is a tale of loyalty and duty, of what gives life meaning and how that differs for each show more person. This quick read only made me want to find a biography of Onoda and delve into his life even more. It is absolutely fascinating. show less