In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with red title on the spine.

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A rare book which deserves to be better known, an excellent English translation from the Japanese.

The name “Yamato” is synonymous with a cartoon spacecraft on television to most young Japanese today. They are blithely unaware of the huge super-battleship that sunk, along with the majority of its crew and its nation’s hopes, in April 1945 under heavy American fire off Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean. Among the few survivors was Mitsuru Yoshida, ensign, assistant radar officer on the ship. His first-hand account of the battle, and the preparation of the ship’s company for it, is a startling piece of literature, quite without precedent, a minor classic in Japan but here published unabridged in English for the first time. It takes the form of a log or journal, mostly in the present tense, but with a free attitude to perspective when the occasion demands. The style is elliptical, often without verb or even subject, lending an urgency to sentences which often constitute dehydrated paragraphs. Best described as a prose-poem, it is worked in a style of Japanese used for military documents, which gives the writing the air of a despatch as well as suggesting the staccato rhythm of conflict.

The narrative rolls with the lurching inevitability of classical tragedy, absorbing in its stifled, sparse tone, though at times the going can be hard for all concerned. It brings to mind Saint-Exupéry’s Flight to Arras, interspersing action with contemplation, giving potted biographies of people who die before we reach the end of the sentence. Yoshida’s vivid descriptions resonate with every shell as what simultaneously detonates within him is the realisation of the arbitrariness of death, something common in survivor literature, how a fraction of circumstance can make the most crucial difference, and how banal it actually is. That the task force headed by “Yamato” was kamikaze merely adds to the futility, but from such tragedy has come this curious, original account that deserves to be accorded minor classic status wherever it is read. –David Vincent

Review: “Requiem for Battleship Yamato” is one of the few books that on finishing it, I immediately started reading it again. When I first started to find out more about the fate of Yamato, the largest, most powerfully armed and armoured battleship ever, I had very conflicting feelings about the fact that such a magnificent ship was destroyed. Yet reading this book made me realise that the American forces had no alternative but to sink Yamato, as she presented a real and present danger to the invasion forces at Okinawa. The fact was that the majority of the officers on Yamato knew that their mission was not just suicidal, it was hopeless; even the mightiest battleship in the world could not defend itself against the concerted attack of hundreds of aeroplanes. Dispatched without air cover on that kamikaze mission and after just two brief hours of sustained assault, she and most of her accompanying ships were sent to the bottom. Over 3,000 men perished on that one ship alone and not just by enemy action. Hundreds drowned when in desperate attempt to keep the ship level, the order was given to flood the starboard engine and boiler rooms. The symbolism of her final moments is powerful: Yamato is the poetic name for Japan itself. When that great ship capsized, the main magazines exploded, creating a mushroom cloud that rose thousands of feet into the air. This vast pillar of smoke foretold of the even taller clouds that would end Japan’s imperial dreams of Pacific conquest three months later. The literary style is terse and formal, almost disconnected from the death and destruction around, yet the words evoke sadness, terror and, yes, admiration for those men in that situation. But at no point does the author ask for our sympathy. Ashore, those men were fathers, brothers, husbands or boyfriends. On Yamato, they were warriors and prepared to carry out their mission to the end. An amazing book that deserves to be better known.