SHIMAO TOSHIO

Shimao Toshio was an author from Yokohama. He graduated from Kyushu University, where he met Shono Junzo, and during the war moved to nearby Amami Oshima island where he met and married his wife, a schoolteacher on the island. They moved to Kobe, then to Tokyo, where he started a literary journal called Gendai Hyoron (Modern Criticism), but ultimately moved back to Amami Oshima where he taught high school. Shimao’s most famous literary works were based on his wartime experiences, and he also wrote of women and madness. His collection Shi no toge (1960; tr. The Sting of Death, 1985) was awarded the Yomiuri Prize in 1977, and in that same year he was awarded the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize for Hi no utsuroi (Movement of the Sun). Shimao also won the Noma Prize in 1982. He died of a brain hemorrhage.

See also CHRISTIAN LITERATURE; WAR LITERATURE.