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南太平洋海域調査研究報告 No.54（2014年12月）
OCCASIONAL PAPERS No.54（December 2014）

Insularity in the Literary Imagination of SHIMAO Toshio
UDO Satoshi
Faculty of Law, Economics and Humanities, Kagoshima University

Abstract
One of the most original authors in post-war Japanese literature, SHIMAO Toshio (1917-1986) isknown not only for his military career (he was an officer on a ‘suicide boat’ at the end of the WWII) but
also for his insightful ideas regarding the Japanese archipelago, which he named ‘Japonesia’ in the 1960s.
His idea, which was to situate Japan on the edge of the chained islands loosely extending from Polynesia
via Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, is now recognized as essential to East Asian cross-border areastudies. However, the question of how ‘archipelagianess’ functions in SHIMAO’s literary writings has notbeen studied satisfactorily in the current body of literature. In my paper, I try to identify some insularimagery in his novels and further discuss the metaphors and meanings that the imagery suggests to thereader.
Keywords: insularity, islandology, Japanese literature, SHIMAO Toshio

A radical overhaul of Japanese literature began soon after WWII. In the latter half of the1940s, a number of young authors began to publish their works: these successive groups ofwriters are called ‘the first post-war school’ and ‘the second post-war school’. The latter is
especially known for its European-style novels, which won high appreciation abroad; thisgroup includes the writers MISHIMA Yukio and ABE Kôbô. SHIMAO Toshio is sometimes
considered as one of these post-war authors, although he is often also regarded as animportant figure of the following generation, called ‘the third freshmen, who became
prominent in the first half of the 1950s. The lightness of this name implies the tendency ofthese authors to describe their daily lives and personal stories without revealing an explicit
political consciousness. However, their literary freshness has gradually won popularity andhigh regard, and they are now recognized as among the most important authors in modernJapanese literature.
SHIMAO Toshio was born in Yokohama and grew up in Kôbe and Nagasaki. In 1944,
having graduated from Kyûshû Imperial University, he was immediately drafted into the navy
as a ‘student on a torpedo boat‘ — that is, a naval bomb boat. After a short period of training,
he was sent to Amami archipelago in the Kagoshima Prefecture as an officer in a naval
suicide-attack squadron. On a small island called Kakeroma, he received an order to prepare

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himself for departure, but he was never given the final order to attack. The war ended, and,miraculously, he survived. These wartime experiences later became major themes in hisliterary works.
After the war, SHIMAO married a woman whom he had met on the island and returned tomainland Japan. Shortly thereafter, he began to publish his auto-fictive short stories. In 1954,
his wife, Miho, became mentally ill, another event which became a major preoccupation in
SHIMAO’s writings. In 1955, SHIMAO moved with his family to the island of Amami-Oshima,
where he lived for around twenty years.
During the time he spent in the Amami archipelago, SHIMAO developed a new vision ofJapan as part of the long archipelago which leads to Taiwan through the Amami and Ryukyu
islands. He named it ‘Japonesia’, situating the Japanese archipelago on the edge of thechained islands extending loosely from Polynesia through Indonesia. The idea to decentralize
Japan and to deconstruct its uniformity has been re-evaluated extensively, especially since the1990s, in the East Asian cross-border area studies. However, how ‘archipelagianess’ or‘islandness’ works in SHIMAO’s literary writings has received very little attention.
The common characteristics of all of SHIMAO’s auto-fictions on his wartime experiencesis the protagonist’s conviction that he is doomed and destined for an imminent death as aresult of the suicide attack he will be ordered to commit. He only lives while the death orderis suspended.
As the title of the short story Shima no Hate (The Farthest Edge of the Islands) suggests,
Kakeroma Island, where the protagonist was sent at the end of the war, is conceived of as theedge of his world, the edge of his imagination. Situated just next to Amami-Oshima Island,
Kakeroma Island is not really a lonely island: however, the protagonist does feel lonely andseparated from the rest of the world. Beyond this edge, only death awaits him. SHIMAO’s lastnovel, Gyoraitei Gakusei (A Student on the Torpedo Boat), describes his gradual journey
towards the actual southern edge of the Japanese Empire: the protagonist is trained first in
Yokosuka, then in Nagasaki, and finally sent to Amami archipelago. This approach to the edge
implies also his approach towards the death (Fig. 1).
As the protagonist arrives at the edge, the island becomes a place which paralyses hissense of being alive. It is described as an isolated, closed space with a complicated contour. Atypical example of such a description is already found in one of SHIMAO’s earliest stories,
Shutsu-kotô-ki (A Tale of Leaving a Lonely Island, 1949).
As the title indicates, the place is a ‘lonely island’, which means that the protagonist andhis squadron can neither move ahead nor turn back. They are trapped and have a limited
supply of food, so they have to cultivate food to eat. They continue to live a peculiar daily life,
eating and excreting, able to determine nothing by themselves. Here they remain, waiting forthe order to attack, the moment of their death. Their condition of being is in every sense
absurd. The narrator keeps expressing his anxiety and apathy:

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Insularity in the Literary Imagination of SHIMAO Toshio

I’m now a soldier! How is this incompatible!? What could I
know about this war? My will was lost, my hands got dirty, I wasrunning down on an inclination. (...) Blown off by the bloody
starvation from the south, I was destined to jump off, not only bymyself but also leading 48 suicide boats, the cliff of the frozen sea
beyond the world.
(SHIMAO 1992, p.138)
We have finally come to this point only to wait for the order todepart.
Strangely, I have lost my ability to persist in this world. The
minute-by-minute delay planted in me a seed of impatience. It was
painful to retain, constantly, the mental readiness to immediately
depart. Now is the chance. Now is the best time. If it is now, I cango out without hesitation.
(Ibid., p.176)

Kôbe●Nagasaki
KakeromaIsland●Yokohama●Approach to the edge/deathAmami-Oshima IslandFig. 1. Gyoraitei Gakusei (A Student on the Torpedo Boat) describing his gradual journey towards theactual southern edge of the Japanese Empire, which implies also his approach towards the death.

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The scenery repeatedly described in the story is the inlet of the island, called‘Nomino-ura’. In this hidden, enclosed space, the protagonist prepares his suicide boatsquadron, using the cliff and its caves to conceal the boats. The protagonist often wanders
along the inlet and the cape, observing the tide coming in and going out. The eventless days
and nights begin to wear on his nerves, and he is continually perplexed by the loss of his will
to live. At last, he receives the order to prepare for attack, but the story ends without him
receiving the final order. The main theme, the eternal delay of a nevertheless impending death,is metaphorically represented by the repeated, cyclic nature of his natural surroundings in theinlet.
I close this short paper with a quotation related to the inlet, which indicates apresentiment of rebirth.
In the freshness of the dawn, every inch of my body wasliberated, flexible, absorbed in the enthralling relief that myfulfilled flesh still belonged to myself.
It is probably that our action will be delayed while the sunshines.
Then, the morning came naturally in the inlet, and its fresh
impression soon, along with the sunrise, began to repeat its daytime
routine.
Nothing happened.
(Ibid., pp.186-7)

References
SHIMAO, T. 1992. Shimao Toshio (Chikuma Nihon Bungaku Zenshû 32), 477 pp.,
Chikuma-Shobô, Tokyo, Japan (in Japanese).
SHIMAO, T. 2011. Gyoraitei Gakusei [A Student on the Torpedo Boat], 205 pp., Shinchô-Sha,Tokyo, Japan (in Japanese).