About Junzo Shono

Junzo Shono was born in 1921, the fourth child of an Osaka educator. His interest in literature blossomed at the age of eighteen, when he discovered the writings of Charles Lamb shortly after entering the Osaka School of Foreign Languages. Among his other early literary influences were the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, the stories of Japanese authors Hyakken Uchida and Masuji Ibuse, and the poetry of Shizuo Ito. Shono entered the Asian History Department of Kyushu University in 1942, and proceeded from there to reserve officers' training in the navy in January, 1944. Upon completion of his training at the end of that year, he was commissioned an ensign and scheduled to go to the Philippines, but rapidly changing war conditions kept him in Japan until the end of the war.

Just prior to his accelerated graduation from Kyushu University and induction into the navy, Shono had published his first short story in a small coterie journal; once the war was over, he took up his pen again while working as a middle-school teacher in Osaka and began publishing several short stories each year in local literary journals. He was first noticed by established literary circles in Tokyo in 1949 for the story "Aibu" (Caresses), and he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1955 for "Purusaido Shokei" (Evenings at the Pool,* published 1954). Many of the works that brought Shono notice during this early period, including these two, were stories that delved into strained husband-wife relationships in troubled young marriages. He also wrote a number of autobiographical works based on childhood memories or on his wartime experiences.

Shortly after receiving the Akutagawa Prize, which assured his literary future, Shono decided to resign from the Asahi Broadcasting Company, where he had worked since 1951, so that he

From 1957 to 1958, Shono and his wife, Chizuko, spent a year at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. He kept a detailed journal of his experiences and observations while there, and after his return to Japan he shaped his notes into a volume of short stories about their encounters with American life called Gambia Taizaiki (Sojourn in Gambier, 1959). The American journey may be called a watershed experience for Shono, and the work that came out of it saw him further refining an autobiographical and largely documentary writing style.

In 1955, before his year in the United States, Shono had published the novel-length Zabon no Hana (Pomelo Blossoms), which may be considered his first work in the "family chronicle" mode that ultimately became his trademark. The 1960 short story, "Seibutsu" (Still Life*), which won the Shinchosha Literary Prize, brought the family chronicle series to maturity and firmly established it as the cornerstone of his writing.

In this series of stories, Shono moves his primary focus from the married couple to the children, and he layers "snapshots" of the most commonplace events, images, and conversations from family life with the father's meandering ruminations about them to cast light upon deeper truths of the human experience. The stories are about a family of five modeled closely on Shono's own (though the makeup of the family was still somewhat different in Zabon no hana), and they document many of his children's real-life experiences as they made their way through school, then moved on out into the working world and into marriages and families of their own. Other award-winning works in the series include Yube no Kumo (Evening Clouds, 1964-65, the Yomiuri Literary Prize), "Eawase" (Picture Cards,* 1970, the Noma Literary Prize), and Akio to Ryoji (Akio and Ryoji, 1972, the Mainichi Literary Prize).

After "Still Life," Shono also began seeking subject matter from beyond his own personal experiences. True to his longstanding documentary impulse, the resulting stories, of varying lengths, were in effect oral histories of ordinary people Shono had encountered in his travels or come to know through some other connection. Shono does appear in these works as the oral historian who listens and records, but the stories are strictly those of the one or more informants whose words Shono records as faithfully as he can. In 1970, he received the Ministry of Education Fine Arts Prize (Geijutsu Sensho) for Konno Kigyojo (The Konno Textile Plant, 1969) which tells the life story of the owner of a small textile plant.

Shono has continued to write prolifically throughout the years since, typically publishing at least one volume of short stories, essays, or a novel each year. The output includes continuing tales in the family chronicle series, in recent years focusing mainly on the grandchildren; further stories about Gambier, of his lasting friendships with the people he met there and of returning to visit many years later; oral histories of ordinary working people; a volume of essays on the work of Charles Lamb; his own story of suffering and recovering from a stroke; and writings on sundry other topics.

In 1973, Shono received a Japan Art Academy Award in recognition of his entire body of work; he also received the Kawasaki City Cultural Prize. In 1978 he returned to visit Gambier and received an honorary doctorate from Kenyon College. In 1993 he was decorated with the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government, and also received the Kanagawa Prefecture Cultural Prize. He is a member of the Japan Art Academy.

Shono and his wife still live in the house that became the model for the Oura's home in Evening Clouds.

*Included in the Shono collection Still Life and Other Stories, translated by Wayne P. Lammers (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 1992).

[Excerpted from Evening Clouds by Junzo Shono. Published by Stone Bridge Press, P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707 © 2000 Wayne P. Lammers. All rights reserved.]