The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship
Volume 2 – Issue 2 – Autumn 2013

The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship
Volume 2 – Issue 2 – Autumn 2013

The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship
Volume 2 – Issue 2 – Autumn 2013

This paper represents an attempt to consider how artists in general—and Japanese post-war
novelists in particular—deal with traumatic experience and how this process is reflected in
their subsequent literary texts. More specifically, it will consider how two Japanese
immediate post-war authors, Shimao Toshio (1917–86) and Shiina Rinzō (1911–73)—
neither of whom saw active experience at the front but who both emerged, by their own
admission, heavily traumatized from their experiences of the period—tackled the issue of
depicting in their literary texts their wartime experiences and their subsequent attempts to
return to ‘normal’ life in the immediate aftermath of war. The literary process whereby they
first ‘act out’ and subsequently ‘work through’ their particular traumatic experiences will
be examined—and, in so doing, their oeuvres will be presented as ongoing, collaborative
projects aimed at more fully ‘constituting’ certain traumatic events in cognitive, affective
and ethical terms.

Keywords: Shimao Toshio, Shiina Rinzō, trauma, Asia-Pacific War

Richard Donovan