A Sheep's Song: A Writer's Reminiscences of Japan and the World

by Shûichi Katô, Chia-ning Chang (Translator), Chia-ning Chang (Contribution by)

Overview

This critically acclaimed autobiography was an instant bestseller in Japan, where it has gone through more than forty printings since its first publication. Cultural critic, literary historian, novelist, poet, and physician, Kato Shuichi reconstructs his dramatic spiritual and intellectual journey from the militarist era of prewar Japan to the dynamic postwar landscapes of Japan and Europe. This fluid translation of A Sheep's Song captures Kato's unique voice and brings his insightful interpretation of modern Japan and its tumultuous relations with the outside world to English-speaking readers for the first time.

Kato describes his youthful interest in the natural sciences as well as in Japanese and Western literatures—from the Man'yoshu to Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Baudelaire, Valéry, and Proust. Turning to the rise of Japanese fascism in the late 1930s, he recalls his rebellion against the jingoistic political atmosphere of the time. The chapters on the war and its aftermath include experiences of Hiroshima shortly after the bombing and the often tragicomic encounters between the defeated Japanese nation and the American Occupation forces. Throughout, memories of his wide-ranging literary career and broad experiences in Europe as a student, traveler, and cultural observer are punctuated by his unique perspectives on the relation between imagination, art, and politics.

A postscript written especially for the English-language edition discusses the Vietnam War, the subsequent transformation of Japan, the cultures and societies of Europe, the United States, and China, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520219793
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/03/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	506
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Critic, novelist, literary historian, and dramatist Kato Shuichi is Guest Professor of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University. He is author of many works, including a three-volume History of Japanese Literature (1979-83) and Form, Style, Tradition: Reflections on Japanese Art and Society (1971) and coauthor of Six Lives, Six Deaths: Portraits from Modern Japan (1979). Chia-ning Chang is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of California, Davis.

What People are Saying About This

Iwane Shibuya

Iwane Shibuya, Limina, University of Western Australia
This book has captured the imagination of a large number of Japanese readers. . . ., exploring as it does the modern Japanese sense of self and its place in the world. . . . It has been a pleasure to read a translation that conveys the nuance of Japanese writing so well. The translator's enormous efforts in its references, footnotes, and bibliography made this book something like a small encyclopedia in Japanese cultural history.

J. Thomas Rimer

J. Thomas Rimer, University of Pittsburgh
This nuanced translation of Kato Shuichi's intellectual autobiography provides a trenchant and highly personal vision of the works and thought of a significant figure in Japan's postwar period. . . . It makes provocative reading for those interested in Japanese and comparative literature, intellectual history, and the arts.

Editorial Reviews

Elegantly translated and usefully annotated by Chang Chia-ning, these memoirs make an entertaining self-portrait of a Japanese who made it his business to become a citizen of the world, while remaining staunchly Japanese.
—(Times Literary Supplement)

Anthony Thwaite

For an overview. . . of how one Japanese intellectual traversed a good part of the twentieth century to define himself as an internationalist, A Sheep's Song furnishes a fascinating read.
—(World Literature)

Yoshio Iwamoto

A much-awaited book. . . . A Sheep's Song bears poignant relevance to any effort to understand Japan's current affairs and her future.

Journal of Asian Studies

. . . a critically-acclaimed autobiography. . . Kato's painted scenes are most poignant, unique, and enjoyable. . . . It doesn't take much sensitivity to admire the bravery to give such clarity to sweeping interpretations of Japan and its often rocky and misunderstood relations with the rest of the world . . . . Kudos to Chia-ning Chang for an excellent translation.
—(Mainichi Daily News)

Ethne Ashizawa

Kato (b. 1919) is one of postwar Japan's most cosmopolitan literary critics and involved political essayists; his autobiography will open the eyes of many readers to what it can mean to be Japanese. Kato's patrician grandfather owned an Italian restaurant in Tokyo, his doctor father and gentle mother gave him a thoughtfully critical base in traditional Japanese culture, his education made him both a lover of Japan and a Marxist opponent of the Japanese establishment, and his literary translations and studies of European literature after the war made him a Third World intellectual who led demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan security treaty. Kato's gentle writerly skill with personalities and events allows him to put these seemingly contradictory elements together in a way that expands our understanding. The scholarly introduction and notes at first encumber but ultimately support the reader who has an interest in but not special knowledge of Japan. For larger general collections.--Charles Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A bestseller in Japan, where it has gone through more than 40 printings since its was first published in the late '60s, this autobiography of a noted Japanese man of letters will strike many Western readers as serious, well-meaning, and mind-numbingly dull. Shuichi (History of Japanese Literature, not reviewed) came of age just as his homeland began its descent into the vociferous imperialist militarism that culminated in WWII. But politics and the international situation hardly affected his schooling, every minute didactic and pedagogical significance of which Shuichi seems compelled to detail. Though he was against the war, he kept his opposition largely to himself, waiting out the conflict as a medical student, then a doctor. After the war, he leapt at a rare chance to travel in Europe on a scholarship. Doing a little medical work, as well as translating and whatever other jobs he could pick up, Shuichi traveled extensively, living for substantial periods in France and England. Eventually, he decided to turn his full attention to writing and the world of academia, punching the clock at universities around the world. The original book ends in the early 1960s; an update for the English edition adds little beyond résumé and curricula. Shuichi's extensive comparisons between Japanese and Western culture seem stilted and shopworn, though they may have been interesting to his original Japanese readers. Translator Chang does an excellent job of providing helpful annotations throughout and gently guiding readers through the thicket of unfamiliar names and terms. The book has a thin degree of sociological interest, but its overwhelming effect is soporific. (13 b&w photos, notseen) .

Kirkus Reviews