This paper analyzes the animating potential of narrative in Medoruma Shun's Me no oku no mori (In the Woods of Memory, 2009). The novel's narrative structure embodies both the constant circulation of traumatic memories, particularly surrounding sexual violence, and the inevitable gaps in such memories. The text draws the reader in turn into its spiral of telling and re-telling, shifting the burden of narrating history onto countless new witnesses. Moreover, the act of narrating this violent past necessarily entails the acknowledgment of one's own complicity in its violent reverberations in the present.