The story of White Night spanned almost twenty years from October of 1973 to December of 1992。 Though there was almost no direct time mark, still we can find some hints from the events mentioned in the novel, such as Minamata disease in Kumamoto-ken in 1973, the fourth Middle East War, the first Japan oil crisis, the fashion of Space Invaders and Super Mario, a series of news reports about baseball matches and so on。 There was no setting of violent war like American Civil War in Gone with the Wind, but in the whole time span of the story, Japan experienced two oil crisis and the bubble economy, which were just invisible war and made great change to the Japanese society, especially the Japanese economy。 文献综述

The start of the whole story was the death of Ryouji’s father and he was killed at an uncompleted and suspended building, which was a result of economy crisis。 After the Second World War, Japan’s economy got to take off in 1970s。 However, the polarization of wealth and class opposition was unexpected intensified。 The public was overwhelmed with the excessive pursuit of money and high living pressure, so that various mental diseases and twisted social phenomenon appeared, such as extramarital affairs, incest, and pederosis。 

As the main characters of the novel, neither Ryouji nor Yukiho had a loving family。 Ryouji’s father was a pedophilia while his mother had an affair with another man who worked for in their pawnshop, and they even made love under the circumstance that Ryouji knew it and could even hear it。 Yukiho grew up in a poor family。 As her father died early, her mother could hardly make the ends meet。 Unfortunately, Yukiho was betrayed by her mother, her closest person。 To get money, her mother pushed her to suffer from salacious act performed by Ryouji’s father。 Both of Ryouji and Yukiho had seen the dark and evil side of this world when they were supposed to enjoy a pure and happy childhood。 The broken family, irresponsible parents and miserable experience led their values to get off track and pushed them to walk into a road of cheating and crime。 What if they had a happy family and loving parents? Thus, there seems to be an endless loop that the public tragedies led to family tragedies and finally personal tragedies while personal tragedies will contribute to the public tragedies in turn。