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The Night of the New Moon
Book by Laurens Van der Post
124 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 10, 2018
I liked this book. I didn't love this book. First the good: Laurens van der Post has incredible emotional intelligence. He is fair, compassionate, and has an astounding world view. His writing is also very powerful and eloquent.
What I didn't like: sometimes it seemed to take him 2-3 pages to get to a point or for me to figure out what he was talking about.
Still, this book is powerful. Even though he spent several years an a Japanese Prisoners of War (POW) camp, he does not hate Japanese people. In fact, he seems to really understand his captors and the other prisoners. I've only read a few of his other books, but I will look forward to reading more.
What I didn't like: sometimes it seemed to take him 2-3 pages to get to a point or for me to figure out what he was talking about.
Still, this book is powerful. Even though he spent several years an a Japanese Prisoners of War (POW) camp, he does not hate Japanese people. In fact, he seems to really understand his captors and the other prisoners. I've only read a few of his other books, but I will look forward to reading more.
August 24, 2018
Another remarkable account by Laurens van der Post of his time incarcerated in a Japanese POW camp in Java, 1942-45. I read this after reading "The Seed and the Sower", and it helped me understand the meaning of that title a little better. The title for this one is explained towards the end of the book: "It seemed no idle coincidence to me that the moon, which plays the great symbolic role in the movement of the Japanese spirit that I have stressed so much, should be in the last phase of dying just when the end for the Japanese in this war appeared to have drawn so near." In "The Seed and the Sower", the narrator mentions the fact, noticed by himself and other prisoners, that the most violent outrages of their Japanese captors came around the full moon.
This book is less fictional than "The Seed and the Sower" and has just one narrator. It deals with " the day-to-day facts of what we had endured under the Japanese", but with a specific purpose which requires, in typical Laurentian fashion, that a long story be told in detail. The frame of the story is a visit to a recording studio to give a radio broadcast. Van der Post arrived in time to see the end of an interview with an elderly Japanese gentleman. After hearing the man's final comments, van der Post turned to his hosts and insisted he be allowed to change his topic to address matters which had occurred to him as he listened to the end of the interview. He then addressed his remarks to the Japanese gentleman, which form the bulk of the book.
"more and more people see the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki out of context. They tend to see it increasingly as an act of history in which we alone were the villains. I have been amazed to observe how in some extraordinary way my own Japanese friends do not seem to feel that they had done anything themselves to provoke us into inflicting Hiroshima and Nagasaki on them and how strangely incurious they are about their own part in the war.
"Those of us who had survived like him and myself could only discharge our debt by looking as deeply and as honestly as we could into the various contributions we had made to this disaster. The war and the bomb, after all, had started in ourselves before they struck in the world without, and we had to look as never before into our own small individual lives and the context of our various nations. We who were saved seemed to me charged by life itself to live in such a way now that no atom bomb could ever be dropped again, and war need never again be called in, as it had been throughout recorded history, as the terrible healer of one-sidedness and loss of soul in man.
"The only sure way to rid life of villains, I believed, after years of thinking about it in prison, was to rid ourselves first of the villain within our own individual and native collective contexts.
"the only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies. Forgiveness, my prison experience had taught me, was not mere religious sentimentality; it was as fundamental a law of the human spirit as the law of gravity. If one broke the law of gravity one broke one’s neck; if one broke this law of forgiveness one inflicted a mortal wound on one’s spirit and became once again a member of the chain-gang of mere cause and effect from which life has laboured so long and painfully to escape. The conduct of thousands of men in war and in prison with me confirmed with an eloquence which is one of my most precious memories of war, that the spirit of man is naturally a forgiving spirit."
That is the message of the book. The author also provides a perspective on the atomic bombings which I had not encountered before: "This cataclysm would end the war, and a new phase of life would inevitably result from it. This cataclysm I was certain would make the Japanese feel that they could now withdraw from the war without dishonour, because it would strike them, as it had us in the silence of our prison night, as something supernatural. They, too, could not help seeing it as an act of God more than an act of man, a Divine intimation that they had to follow and to obey in all its implications. The continuation of the war by what we, for want of a better word and for fear of telling the truth call ‘conventional means’, would have left them locked in the old old situation of a battle of opposites in which their whole history, culture and psychology would have demanded death either in fighting or by their own hand."
I have lived in Japan for many years, and yet I found many interesting insights into the Japanese psyche from reading this book, too many to quote in full but I'll give you just one: " the remote and archaic nature of the forces which had invaded the Japanese spirit, blocking out completely the light of the twentieth-century day. It was, indeed, the awareness of this dark invasion which made it impossible for people like ourselves, even at our worst moments in prison, to have any personal feelings against our captors, because it made us realize how the Japanese were themselves the puppets of immense impersonal forces to such an extent that they truly did not know what they were doing. It was amazing how often and how many of my men would confess to me, after some Japanese excess worse than usual, that for the first time in their lives they had realized the truth, and the dynamic liberating power of the first of the Crucifixion utterances: ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.’"
This book is less fictional than "The Seed and the Sower" and has just one narrator. It deals with " the day-to-day facts of what we had endured under the Japanese", but with a specific purpose which requires, in typical Laurentian fashion, that a long story be told in detail. The frame of the story is a visit to a recording studio to give a radio broadcast. Van der Post arrived in time to see the end of an interview with an elderly Japanese gentleman. After hearing the man's final comments, van der Post turned to his hosts and insisted he be allowed to change his topic to address matters which had occurred to him as he listened to the end of the interview. He then addressed his remarks to the Japanese gentleman, which form the bulk of the book.
"more and more people see the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki out of context. They tend to see it increasingly as an act of history in which we alone were the villains. I have been amazed to observe how in some extraordinary way my own Japanese friends do not seem to feel that they had done anything themselves to provoke us into inflicting Hiroshima and Nagasaki on them and how strangely incurious they are about their own part in the war.
"Those of us who had survived like him and myself could only discharge our debt by looking as deeply and as honestly as we could into the various contributions we had made to this disaster. The war and the bomb, after all, had started in ourselves before they struck in the world without, and we had to look as never before into our own small individual lives and the context of our various nations. We who were saved seemed to me charged by life itself to live in such a way now that no atom bomb could ever be dropped again, and war need never again be called in, as it had been throughout recorded history, as the terrible healer of one-sidedness and loss of soul in man.
"The only sure way to rid life of villains, I believed, after years of thinking about it in prison, was to rid ourselves first of the villain within our own individual and native collective contexts.
"the only hope for the future lay in an all-embracing attitude of forgiveness of the peoples who had been our enemies. Forgiveness, my prison experience had taught me, was not mere religious sentimentality; it was as fundamental a law of the human spirit as the law of gravity. If one broke the law of gravity one broke one’s neck; if one broke this law of forgiveness one inflicted a mortal wound on one’s spirit and became once again a member of the chain-gang of mere cause and effect from which life has laboured so long and painfully to escape. The conduct of thousands of men in war and in prison with me confirmed with an eloquence which is one of my most precious memories of war, that the spirit of man is naturally a forgiving spirit."
That is the message of the book. The author also provides a perspective on the atomic bombings which I had not encountered before: "This cataclysm would end the war, and a new phase of life would inevitably result from it. This cataclysm I was certain would make the Japanese feel that they could now withdraw from the war without dishonour, because it would strike them, as it had us in the silence of our prison night, as something supernatural. They, too, could not help seeing it as an act of God more than an act of man, a Divine intimation that they had to follow and to obey in all its implications. The continuation of the war by what we, for want of a better word and for fear of telling the truth call ‘conventional means’, would have left them locked in the old old situation of a battle of opposites in which their whole history, culture and psychology would have demanded death either in fighting or by their own hand."
I have lived in Japan for many years, and yet I found many interesting insights into the Japanese psyche from reading this book, too many to quote in full but I'll give you just one: " the remote and archaic nature of the forces which had invaded the Japanese spirit, blocking out completely the light of the twentieth-century day. It was, indeed, the awareness of this dark invasion which made it impossible for people like ourselves, even at our worst moments in prison, to have any personal feelings against our captors, because it made us realize how the Japanese were themselves the puppets of immense impersonal forces to such an extent that they truly did not know what they were doing. It was amazing how often and how many of my men would confess to me, after some Japanese excess worse than usual, that for the first time in their lives they had realized the truth, and the dynamic liberating power of the first of the Crucifixion utterances: ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.’"
April 27, 2025
I loved the clarity of the author's prose. And I admired the compassion and sensibility of his observations regarding his fellow man. It was a joy to read. I didn't, to be honest, care much for the author's conclusions, his ultimate motivation to write it, which was to justify the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the basis of the avoidance of greater loss of life. I think this has been somewhat debunked. And I recoiled somewhat at his gumption of putting this argument to a Japanese doctor whose whole family had been annihilated in the bombings. But all told this was an enjoyable read.
October 9, 2025
The Night of the New Moon is a profound and deeply humane meditation on survival, captivity, and the enduring power of the human spirit. Drawing on his experiences as a prisoner of war under the Japanese in Java during World War II, Van der Post crafts a narrative that transcends the typical boundaries of wartime memoir. Rather than focusing solely on the brutality and deprivation of camp life, he turns his attention inward, reflecting on the inner resources that sustain people in extremity. The “new moon” of the title becomes a powerful symbol of renewal and hope in the midst of darkness, a theme that van der Post uses to explore the moral and spiritual dimensions of suffering.
Ultimately, The Night of the New Moon stands as both testimony and meditation—an eloquent attempt to wrest understanding from one of history’s darkest chapters. It affirms van der Post’s enduring belief in the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of reconciliation, even after unimaginable suffering.
A beautifully written, introspective exploration of humanity.
Ultimately, The Night of the New Moon stands as both testimony and meditation—an eloquent attempt to wrest understanding from one of history’s darkest chapters. It affirms van der Post’s enduring belief in the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of reconciliation, even after unimaginable suffering.
A beautifully written, introspective exploration of humanity.
June 3, 2017
I am currently translating the book to Russian.
April 3, 2019
Fabulous
I have read this book many times. Very rarely would i force any one book onto universal curriculum. I would with this book .
I have read this book many times. Very rarely would i force any one book onto universal curriculum. I would with this book .
August 10, 2023
A book somewhat marred by van der Post's typical 'sage' pose and general lack of humour. An impressive tale nonetheless, which can be finished in one sitting.
November 20, 2013
The book tells the story of a Japanese prison camp in Java during the author's four years before the war ended. He suffers many hardships of course, but his triumph is keeping in contact with the outside world via a secret radio. When the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he and hundreds of thousands of POWs are released and the war is ended without more extensive bloodshed. His thesis is that if were not for the unworldly power of these bombs Japan would have fought to the very last soldier and killed all POWs. He doesn't blame the Japanese personally because he sees it as part of their character to go all the way with everything they do, including war. Living here in Japan, I think he has a valid point.
May 24, 2014
I’m glad I read it. It was a very interesting account of his tenure in a Japanese prisoner of War camp in WW II. It was a pretty quick, but affecting read. While he does not spell out in detail the trauma that he and his comrades experienced there - what he does tell is of the amazing creativity, resilience and humanity of he and his fellow prisoners. His reflections on both punishment and on the nuclear bomb at the end - will come as a surprise to many readers.
March 28, 2008
this has gotten to be a hard book to find. it's the account of the author's time as a japanese prisoner of war during WWII, and a meditation on the morality of the hiroshima/nagasaki bombs.
June 29, 2025
Not a review; reminder to self. Recommended to me by member of mandolin orchestra as the book that inspired a piece we played, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews