Shiina Rinz emerged on the Japanese literary scene in the aftermath of the Pacific War and immediately betrayed all the hallmarks of an author for whom war and the U.S. Occupation had become the norm. In contrast to many of his contemporaries in the sengoha (postwar) literary world who sought escape from the physical ruins of Japan, this task of reconstruction assumed for Shiina an additional spiritual dimension, as he strove to come to terms with the sense of betrayal inspired by his tenk (a public statement renouncing Communist affiliation) to secure his release from jail. The result was an author who, unable to look down on these ruins from above, was obliged to crawl around helplessly within. But as critic Takad Kaname has asserted in his recent study of Shiina's writings, "the knowledge that he had escaped the calamities of war alive would have made every...