A Japanese kamikaze pilot who turns back from his mission and is shunned by his family, told through his daughter's account to her children.
How the Second World War and Japanese ideas of honour and shame shape the poem, and how its narrative voices, imagery and stanzas work.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Her father embarked at sunrise', 'a shaven head / full of powerful incantations', 'enough fuel for a one-way / journey into history', 'the little fishing boats / strung out like bunting', 'the dark shoals of fishes / flashing silver as their bellies', 'a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous', 'my mother never spoke again / in his presence', 'as though he no longer existed', 'till gradually we too learned / to be silent', 'which had been the better way to die'.
Form: seven six-line stanzas without rhyme, a story handed down from the pilot's daughter to her children; the move from her account to her own voice ('my mother', 'we children'); the rich, living sea that turns him back; and the open question at the end.
Context: Japan's kamikaze pilots, who flew suicide attacks on Allied ships from October 1944 to the end of the Second World War; the samurai code of loyalty and honour until death, and the shame of defeat.
Compares well with: Disabled on a soldier's return and his rejection; Cousin Kate on shame and being shunned; Catrin on parents and children; Remains on what a soldier lives with afterwards.
