Shimazaki Toson on War

Abstract

POET and novelist Shimazaki Toson ,W Oti, 1872-1943, depicted four wars in which Japan was involved during his long and prolific career. Unlike his friend, novelist Tayama Katai orL, 1872-1930, Toson never served in the military abroad or witnessed combat. However, he described the impact on Japan of conflicts with China, 1894-1895, and Russia, 1904-1905, and penned first-hand accounts of hardships experienced during World War I by Europeans and resident Japanese in France, where he lived between 1913 and 1916. His writing on war includes fiction, prose reminiscences, and an extended narrative poem, Nofu t ('The Farmer'), 1898, a work that has inspired literary critics in recent years to identify him as one of the first Japanese writers after the Meiji Restoration to express opposition to war by publishing antiwar poetry (hansenshi F 1 In this study I will discuss these works and the literary criticism in Japan that presents them as examples of antiwar literature. Toson was still distinguishing himself as a highly successful poet when he published the story Utatane (Restless Sleep), set mostly during the SinoJapanese War, in the magazine Shinshosetsu J November 1897. Although he had called this work an experiment, he was stung by scathing reviews and did not publish fiction again for four years.2 Yet while criticized for flaws in description and characterization, the story seems to have drawn its severest condemnation from critics who strongly disapproved of its depiction of the sufferings and sacrifices of war.