Shimao Toshio

Toshio Shimao in 1944 as a lieutenant captain in the Navy

Shimao Toshio ( Japanese 島 尾 敏 雄 ; born April 18, 1917 in Yokohama , † November 12, 1986 in Kagoshima ) was a Japanese writer.

Shimao studied at Kyushu University . During the war he lived on Amami-Ōshima , where he met and married his future wife, a schoolteacher. After the war he went first to Kobe, then to Tokyo, where he founded the magazine Gendai Hyōron . Eventually he returned to Amami-Ōshima and worked there as a teacher.

Shimao has received numerous awards for his literary work. In 1972 he received the Mainichi Culture Prize in the Literature and Art category. For his best-known work, the autobiographical novel Shi no toge ( 死 の 棘 ; in German translation: sting of death , 1999) he was awarded the Yomiuri Literature Prize in 1977 and the Grand Prize for Japanese Literature in 1978 . For Hi no utsuroi he received the Tanizaki Jun'ichirō Prize in 1977 , the Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize for Wannai no irie de 1983 and the Noma Literature Prize for Gyoraitei gakusei in 1985 .

Works

• Sting of death (死 の 棘, Shi no toge). Insel 1999. ISBN 978-3-458-16991-8
• On the way with Maya (story), in: Explorations - 19 Japanese storytellers , ed. v. Brettschneider / Haase. Volk & Welt 1989. ISBN 3-353-00581-1

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• Scott J. Miller: "Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater" , Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 9780810863194 , p. 113
• Pearl Divers - Shimao Toshio

Web links

• The God That Failed: The Literary Trajectory of Shimao Toshio (Master's thesis, English, PDF)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Shimao is the family name, Toshio the first name.