Book description
WHEAT AND SOLDIERS CONTENTS WHEAT AND SOLDIERS An Impression by William
Henry Chamberlin vii TRANSLATORS FOREWORD by Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto
ix EARTH AND SOLDIERS 3 WHEAT AND SOLDIERS 151 Wheat and Soldiers An
Impression by William Henry Chamberlin Wheat and Soldiers is, to the
best of my knowl edge, the first deeply significant book to come out of
the Sino-Japanese conflict. The author, Corporal Ashihei Hino, is a
soldier in the ranks of the Jap anese army but the first quality that
lifts his work far above the general run of war books is the complete
absence of any propagandist element. Hino is neither prowar nor antiwar,
neither pro-Japanese nor anti-Japanese. What he endeavors to do very
successfully is to give the human side of the Japanese drive for
Suchow-fu, in which he partici pated, to show himself and his
fellow-soldiers not as legendary heroes but as credible men, their
moments of despair and weakness blending with acts of great courage and
devotion. Wheat and Soldiers possesses some of the time less, epic
character that made Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front, by general
agreement, the outstanding book on the World War, And it has already
achieved in Japan the phenomenal success of All Quiet on the Western
Front in Germany and other countries. Nearly a half million copies have
vii viii WHEAT AND SOLDIERS been sold, although only a few months have
passed since the book was published. The reason for this extraordinary
popularity is obvious. Hino is telling what war really is, with all the
elements of pain and terror that are systematically omitted from
censored newspaper correspondence and official military pub lications.
The Japanese people who have brothers, husbands, sons, friends at the
front appreciate this fact and have responded to the appeal of the book
in enormous numbers. Before the war Mr. Hino was a well-known writer in
Japan and the winner of a literary prize. TRANSLATOR S FOREWORD Less
than a year after the outbreak of fighting between China and Japan, the
Japanese public was startled by the appearance of a small book entitled
Wheat and Soldiers. The cover identified the author as Corporal Ashihei
Hino. He was an in fantryman, attached to a Japanese unit fighting in
Central China. Wheat and Soldiers generated one of those storms of
enthusiasm, common to all nations. It was the common soldier, the
ordinary mud slog ger, and his view. And it had, besides, another unique
quality. It was written, not in any cloistered study, from the
perspective of afterthought, but set down from day to day, while the
author was actually on the field of battle. He literally turned from
seeing a scene to the description of it. Parts of Wheat and Soldiers are
from his diary. Other sections were taken from his letters to his
family. The book became an overnight sensation in Japan and then
Corporal Hino was identified. His true name was Katsunori Tamai, born as
a son of the president of a stevedore guild in Kyushu. He was already
well-known to a small and perhaps x WHEAT AND SOLDIERS exclusive section
of the Japanese reading public. They remembered him as a contributor to
literary magazines and the author of a collection of fan tasies called
The Warship on the Mountain. The volume had hardly appeared before he
was called to the front By an odd coincidence, it was while he was in
the midst of his first campaign in China that word came to him that
Japanese critics had bestowed upon him the Akutagawa Prize Japans
highest literary honor for two of his earlier stories, The Poor People
Funnyo-dan and The Fish With Poison 7 Ftigu . At that very moment, he
was writing the collection of letters and essays that were to be
compiled in book form under the titles Earth and Soldiers and Wheat and
Soldiers. Chronologically, Earth and Soldiers came first. But Wheat and
Soldiers, written some months later, was the first to be published...
