Kojima Nobuo's short story, “The Rifle”, is about a young Japanese soldier and his recount of his time in the war. The soldier is at first excited to begin his life as a soldier, eager to work and fervently cleaning and maintaining his rifle. But after killing a pregnant Chinese woman, who reminds him so much of the married woman with whom he had had an affair, he loses his passion for the war and his rifle, and slowly descends into an unstable state. He eventually tries to destroy his rifle, and in the process kills his commanding officer and ends up in a military prison. I identified the theme of this work to be “masculinity is a dangerous weapon”, taking the imagery of the rifle literally. In the short story itself, the rifle is symbolized