Thorn of death

by Toshio Shimao

A translation of “The Sting of Death” and other stories by Japanese short fiction writer Shimao Toshio.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Stories
The Farthest Edge of the Islands
This Time That Summer
Everyday Life in a Dream
The Sting of Death
Out of the Depths
The Heart That Slips Away

Interpretive Comments on the Stories

Appendix
Bibliography

Genres: Literary Fiction, Short Stories, Japanese Literature

514 pages, Paperback Bunko

First published September 1, 1985

About the author

Toshio Shimao (島尾 敏雄 Shimao Toshio?, April 18, 1917–November 12, 1986) was a Japanese novelist.

Shimao was born in Yokohama, graduated from Kyushu University, and in 1944 was sent to Japan's southern Amami Islands as an officer for a naval suicide attack (kamikaze) squadron in World War II. The war ended while he was still waiting for his orders. His wartime experiences inspired his earliest works, including Shima no hate (1946) and Shutsukotō-ki (A Tale of Leaving a Lonely Island, 1949), as well as several later works including Shuppatsu wa tsui ni otozurezu (1962) and Gyoraitei gakusei (Student on the Torpedo Boat, 1985).

A second major theme in his work is that of madness in women, with notable examples in Ware fukaki fuchi yori (1954) and Shi no toge (The Sting of Death, 1960). This theme was related to his wife's mental illness, whom he met and married on the southern islands. In 1955 he took her back to Amami Ōshima, the largest of the Amami Islands; his novella The Sting of Death describes this period using his own name and that of his wife. That work was adapted for the film The Sting of Death in 1990.

1950 Postwar Literature Prize for Shutsukotō-ki (A Tale of Leaving a Lonely Island)
1960 Minister of Education Award for Art for novella Shi no toge (The Sting of Death)
1972 Mainichi Publishing Culture Award for Garasu shoji no shiruetto (Silhouette through Frosted Glass)
1977 Yomiuri Literary Prize for collection The Sting of Death
1977 Tanizaki Prize for Hi no utsuroi (日の移ろい)
1985 Noma Literary Prize for Gyoraitei gakusei (Student on the Torpedo Boat)

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up in the middle of the soap opera of the title story. Sorry.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you come fortuitously across a story that leaps at your throat and becomes painfully, powerfully and immediately relevant. "This Time Last Summer", a story about the effects of the Japanese surrender that ended World War II on a small Japanese naval detachment on a remote and extremely poor Japanese island is exactly such a story. It seems to address an analogous situation to the one we are living through in Venezuela's long-drawn out collapse. Shimao Toshio brilliantly portrays the psychology of such a collapse, the sense of helplessness, depression and abandonment, the break down of discipline and the ensuing, pointless squabbles. Even the historical text of the Emperor's surrender is particularmente relevant, with its bitter and senseless spin: "...the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage" and the recognition of being in hell " . . enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable" . And yet in view of Japan's eventual reconstruction, one can read a glimmer of hope into what on the face of it, appears to be another instance of spin-doctoring in "But please do not abandon yourselves to despair. True, we lost the war, but we have not lost our way of life. As the Imperial Proclamation says, shall we not think of building the future? Through many days of continual air raids, the fields and rice paddies have fallen to ruin. Starting tomorrow, go out and work in those fields. Preparation for life to sustain the future is of the utmost importance."

The night is darkest just before dawn starts. This thought provides a small measure of comfort -even if you know it is whistled rather that uttered in what seems to be an endless and still darkening night...since the Venezuelan nightmare shows little sign of ending any time soon.

Three of the other stories ("The Sting of Death", "Out of the Depths" and "The Heart that Slips Away") included in this collection belong to the author's so -called "sick wife" cycle. In these stories, based on the author's real life experiences, the narrator's wife becomes violently mentally ill. With a little psychoanalytic knowledge, it is evident that both partners -as in Edward Albee's classic "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf"- in this extremely disfunctional and destructive marriage are ill. In the story, the sickness affects the husband, but it is clear that both husband and wife are mentally ill and co-dependent on each other to the point of addiction. But one presumes that in 1950s and 1960s Japan, the brunt of the blame was thrown on the wife, not the husband. Couples therapy did not exist or existed only in a very rudimentary state, so the wife was diagnosed as ill while the husband was interred in a mental institution ostensibly to care for his sick wife -but not only did he need interment too -the couple needed to be split up instead of being allowed to continue their blatantly unhealthy relationship. The three stories are very well written and the reader is sucked into an unrelenting and utterly bleak vortex of madness.

The collection includes two more stories, "The Farthest Edge of the Islands" which is an unconvincing dream-like, almost fairy-tale introduction or prequel to "The Time that Summer" and eminently dispensable "Everyday Life in a Dream", an extended exercise in a dream fugue churning over guilt feelings about the narrator's relation to his (separated?) parents from whom he has emotionally and physically distanced himself.

Toshio Shimao shows extraordinary skill in obsessively probing at psychic wounds, but be warned -he is no healer.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to rate this book. Shimao's prose is distinct and honest and even in the throes of a surrealistic reverie, he comes off as authentic. So it's too bad that there are only 112 pages of it in English. The rest of the book (78 pages) is padded with an introduction, notes, and 'interpretive comments.' I'd give the 'stories' (more like chapters from larger works) 5 stars, but absolutely none for the product. It's a frustrating tease.

[Nermine Tadross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Japanese literature with a Kafkaesque flavor.
The Sting of Death by Japanese author Toshio Shimao (1917-1986), translated by Kathryn Sparling, is a collection of 6 short stories that can olso be read as one novel as each chapter/story is related to the one before and after it.
The narrator tells his story starting just before Japan's defeat in WWII and how he married a girl from a remote island, how they moved to Tokyo and he started his career as a writer. Then there's a 10-year gap but we're told that he had an extended affair in those years and this affair caused his wife to suffer from a sort of mental illness. The last two chapters take place in a psychological ward in a hospital where the narrator stays with his wife trying to atone for his previous negligence of his family.
The first two stories, "The Farthest Edge of the Islands" and "This Time That Summer" are more straightforward than the rest. In the second story one of the most beautifully moving scenes of the reaction of Japan's defeat on simple men and women. A very short but great portrait.
Third story, "Everyday Life in a Dream," a very surreal and absurd tale of how the narrator started his literary career. Excellent for those who like the genre.
The last three stories should be read as one. They tell of how the narrator's wife started to become mentally ill and how his sense of guilt kept him with her even when she is hospitalized. This of course could be read as a story of the unfortunate couple and their destructive relationship but I see the story as a symbol of the absurdity of life and of our Sisyphean absurd existence. The story even makes the reader feel a part of this renewed every day misery! It's just like entering into a Kafkaesque world and feels trapped in it.

[Tvrtko · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of a folie de deux - rather painful to read.

[Nranger7 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave this book a low rating simply because the stories are unpleasant (and scarily realistic).

[Thizlas]

Stopped at page 140. Not unpleasant but the same situations keep recurring and being described in very similar ways.