Abstract: Kenzaburo Oe's novel, The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, was published in 1971. It is an important work among his series of novels on the subject of criticism of the imperial system of Japan. This paper adopts the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud to analyze and interpret the dreamland and illusion of the hero in the novel. Due to his childhood experiences in the national school, the protagonist has a dream of fighting and dying for the emperor for a long time. In the dream, the id plays a dominant role, unwilling to die for the emperor. Finally, he is abandoned by everyone. After waking up, the protagonist is influenced by the contradiction between the id who longs for his fathers recognition and the id who longs to get rid of the pain of nationalism. He hallucinates that he is suffering from cancer, and then chooses to indulge in this illusion. However, the protagonist is exposed by his mother and is pulled back to reality from the “happiness” of integration. From the dreamland to the illusion, the two ids occur in succession and then overlap at the same time, which is the different result of the interaction between the Pleasure Principle and the Reality Principle Freud puts forward. The protagonist's final choice shows that the illusion is just a way for him to escape from the pain. The image the author portrays plays a connecting role in his entire writing career with the theme of criticizing the emperor system.

Key words: dreamland, illusion, psychoanalysis, integration, criticism of the emperor system