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THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES MICHIGAN PAPERS IN JAPANESE STUDIES NO. 12 MICHIGAN PAPERS IN JAPANESE STUDIES No. 1. Political Leadership in Contemporary Japan, edited by Terry Edward MacDougall. No. 2. Parties, Candidates and Voters in Japan: Six Quantitative Studies, edited by John Creighton Campbell. No. 3. The Japanese Automobile Industry: Model and Challenge for the Future?, edited by Robert E. Cole. No. 4. Survey of Japanese Collections in the United States, 1979-1980, by Naomi Fukuda. No. 5. Culture and Religion in Japanese-American Relations: Essays on Uchimura Kanzo, 1861-1930, edited by Ray A. Moore. No. 6. Sukeroku!s Double Identity: The Dramatic Structure of Edo Kabuki, by Barbara E. Thornbury. No. 7. Industry at the Crossroads, edited by Robert E. Cole. No. 8. Treelike: The Poetry of Kinoshita Yuji, translated by Robert Epp. No. 9. The New Religions of Japan: A Bibliography of Western-Language Materials, by H. Byron Earhart. No. 10. Automobiles and the Future: Competition, Cooperation, and Change, edited by Robert E. Cole. No. 11. Collective Decision Making in Rural Japan, by Robert C. Marshall. No. 12. The Sting of Death and Other Stories by Shimao Toshio, translated by Kathryn Sparling. No. 13. The American Automobile Industry: Rebirth or Requiem, edited by Robert E. Cole. "THE STING OF DEATH" AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIMAO TOSHIO translated, with introduction and interpretive comments by Kathryn Sparling Ann Arbor Center for Japanese Studies The University of Michigan 1985 Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. ISBN 0-939512-18-1 Copyright © 1985 Center for Japanese Studies The University of Michigan 108 Lane Hall Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Cover design from a painting by Eric Ernst Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Shimao, Toshio, 1917- "The sting of death" and other stories. (Michigan papers in Japanese studies; no. 12) Translation of six stories. 1. Shimao, Toshio, 1917- —Translations, English. I. Sparling, Kathryn, 1946- . II. Title, in. Series. PL838.H57A27 1985 895.6'35 83-26313 ISBN 0-939512-18-1 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-939512-18-8 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-88000-3 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90201-9 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ For Susanna Finley Rapp CONTENTS Preface ix Introduction 1 The Stories The Farthest Edge of the Islands 11 This Time That Summer 31 Everyday Life in a Dream 57 The Sting of Death 71 Out of the Depths 113 The Heart That Slips Away 127 Interpretive Comments on the Stories 143 Appendix 177 Bibliography 189 vn Preface The stories of Shimao Toshio were first called to my attention in 1972 by a Japanese friend and classmate who was herself a writer of short fiction. Finding them compelling, horrifying, and ultimately wonderful, I thought of putting them into English some day. I actually began this project in 1976, with Shi no toge [The sting of death|, included in this volume, and have worked on them intermittently ever since. Sometimes the contagious hysteria—of the "sick wife" stories in particular—has overwhelmed me, and I have had to stop. I have always come back to them, mostly because they made intimate sense no matter what turn my own life was taking, and because they seem to represent a commitment, rare in modern Japanese literature, to life and to the responsibilities it brings. So the characters in these stories have been with me for nearly ten years, continuing to fascinate me. I introduce them here in the hope that even in pale translation they may seem as real and as valuable to other readers. These stories are more dense and difficult in Japanese than in this English version, which inevitably conveys, in other respects as well, a slightly different impression. My aim was to be rather more literal than otherwise in my translation; I hoped to avoid smoothing over the unusualness of Shimaofs prose by preserving (even at some cost) subtle echoes of the recurrent images embedded there, resisting the temptation to explain, rationalize, or otherwise unmix metaphors. Often I have not succeeded. For one thing, I have generally not been able to retain ambiguity—a striking characteristic of Shimaors prose—but have had to make exclusive choices. Through several stages of editing, I have done away with unclear antecedents and other obstacles to immediate comprehension of the literal meaning of the text. Long sentences and in some cases paragraphs have been broken up where I was finally convinced that the length exceeded what normal English prose would tolerate. Kakeromajima, where the first two stories are set, is one of the larger islands of the Amami Archepelago of the Ryukyus, which stretches from about 200 IX Preface miles south of Kyushu to Okinawa. Since Meiji the Am ami Islands have been part of Kagoshima Prefecture, except for the Occupation years, 1946 to 1953, when they were under American military rule along with Okinawa. From ancient times until they were taken over by the Shimazu of Satsuma in 1609, they were part of the Ryukyu Kingdom ruled by Okinawa. The culture and the language combine elements from both the Ryukyus to the south and mainland Japan to the north. The climate is subtropical. Even today the industry is mostly fishing and agriculture; sugarcane (the brown sugar candy Toe serves the lieutenant in "This Time That Summer"), bananas, and pineapples are the major products. The largest island in the archepelago, Amami Oshima ("Great Island"), where Shimao and his family lived until 1975, produces the famous Oshima tswnugi, a kind of pongee. During the Second World War the Amami Islands were the site of many secret military bases, where special attack-force units (suicide squadrons) like Shimao's were stationed. Like Shimao's wife, many of the people are Christian, as a result of Catholic missionary activities in the nineteenth century, but in general, traditional ways, including religious and folk beliefs, prevailed until well after the war, though they are now quickly disappearing under the influence of national education and, inevitably, television. Many people have helped me with this manuscript, more people than I can thank individually here. Wayne Lammers, now teaching at the University of Wisconsin, did a directed reading course with me several years ago, for which he prepared a good translation of about the first third of Shi no toge. Undoubtedly, some of his phrases have found their way into my version. I am grateful for his help and generosity. I am greatly indebted to Shun'ichi Kato and Yoko Kato, Susumu Nagara, and Mutsuko Endo Simon, all of the University of Michigan, for their invaluable and most gracious assistance in reading the Japanese texts. Advice from native speakers is especially reassuring when venturing to declare a sentence ambiguous. James I. Crump kindly helped me with English word choice, particularly military terms. Most of all, I am grateful for the help and moral support of John Campbell, Director, Elsie Orb, Administrative Associate, and the editor of this series, Bruce E. Willoughby, at the University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, and to Cindi Larson, who typed and retyped my almost illegible manuscript, on my capricious schedule, more times than I care to admit. INTRODUCTION Until a recent "boom," Shimao Toshio, writer of short fiction, critic, and essayist, was not widely known, even in Japan. He has never won the Akutagawa or the Naoki Prize, and to my knowledge, none of his works has appeared in Eng- lish translation. He is less well known than other writers (Yasuoka Shotaro, Ko- jima Nobuo, and Shono Junzo) with whom he has associated and whose works have been liberally translated into English. Yet, there are those who consider him to be one of the best contemporary writers in Japan. Essentially, he has been a writer's writer, admired by other writers, critics, scholars, and especially aspiring writers. His fiction, mostly short stories until "The Sting of Death" was completed in 1977, has been considered avant-garde, difficult of access, and excruciating, a reputation that is based on his early surre- alistic works, such as "Everyday Life in a Dream," many of which appeared in reasonably obscure, specialized journals. But his influence on contemporary writers would seem to be considerable because of both the revival of interest in surrealism immediately following the Second World War and the creation of a subgenre of more or less autobiographical fiction—dubbed katei no jijo shosetsu ("domestic exigency novels"). This terminology derives from the five-year-old Shin'ichi's refrain in Shimao's "The Sting of Death." Whenever his parents begin to fight, Shin'ichi shouts, "Here we go with domestic exigencies" (katei no jifi ga hajimatta), "Stop your domestic exigencies?" (katei no jijo wa yamero). Kojima Nobuo (Hoyo kazoku [Family embrace], 1965) and Miura Shumon (Hako niwa [Mini- ature garden], 1967) have achieved greater popular recognition for this sort of work. Perhaps one reason for Shimao's comparative obscurity has been his person- al reticence, his preference for removing himself from the public eye. That Shimao has spent so comparatively little of his life in Tokyo, the center of the Japanese literary establishment, certainly is a factor. Scholars and journalists who wanted to interview him sometimes have had to travel to the Amami Islands to do so. Thus, those who have written about him have usually been personal acquaintances from his early days as a struggling novelist.

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