The Full Text of “Kamikaze”
The Full Text of “Kamikaze”
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“Kamikaze” Introduction
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"Kamikaze" was written by contemporary British poet Beatrice Garland and published in The Invention of Fireworks (2013). The title refers to Japanese pilots during World War II tasked with flying a suicide mission. With planes full of explosives and just enough fuel to make it to their target, kamikaze pilots had to fly directly at American warships to inflict maximum damage—killing themselves in the process. The poem tells the story of one particular pilot who decides to turn back, prompted by a childhood memory of his brother and father by the sea. Upon his return, however, his whole family disown him—including the poem's main speaker, his daughter.
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“Kamikaze” Summary
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The speaker's father, a kamikaze pilot, sets off on his mission at the break of day. He has some water and a samurai sword with him in the plane. He also has a shaved head, and in his mind he repeats affirmations about his mission. He has just enough fuel to reach his target, which he intends to fly into directly, becoming a part of history in the process.
Years later, the pilot's daughter is telling her own children this story, and she imagines things from her father's perspective once he is halfway to his target. At that point, she imagines her father looking down at the sea below. The fishing boats must look like the little decorative flags as they floated on the clear, blue-green water.
The pilot sees something below the boats, moving in large curves like a giant flag being waved in a figure-eight pattern—it is a school of fish, and their silvery bodies shine whenever their bellies face up towards the sun.
The pilot's view triggers a memory from his childhood. In this memory, he is with his brothers on the beach, stacking small rocks into a pile. The brothers wait to see whose piles will stand up longest when the waves rush in—the same waves that will bring their father's fishing boat home safely.
In an aside, the daughter mentally notes that this, of course, would be her own grandfather's boat. Back in the pilot's memory, the boat comes ashore, full of mackerel, crabs, prawns, and whitebait. The pilot also remembers one occasion when his father caught a huge tuna, which was like a frightening yet exciting warrior prince.
The pilot decides not to fulfill his kamikaze mission, and returns home. When he gets back, his wife refuses to speak to him ever again. She doesn't even look him in the eye. The neighbors treat him with similar disdain, as if he does not even exist anymore. The pilot's children, including the speaker, are the only ones who continue to love him.
Soon enough, though, even they learn to ignore him too, to pretend he never came back—that he isn't their father. Now, many years later, the speaker speculates that her father must have wondered which way was the better to die—in a suicide mission or as a social outcast.
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“Kamikaze” Themes
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Patriotism, Honor, and Shame
The poem tells the story of a Japanese suicide bomber who abandons his mission out of an implied desire to return to his loved ones—only to then be shunned by his community for doing so. The poem explores the conflict between personal and national duty, suggesting an impassible divide between individual desire and extreme patriotism (especially in a society that places great cultural importance on notions of honor). The irony of the poem is that returning to his family costs the pilot his honor, which, in turn, costs him the love of his wife and children.
Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II were typically young men who hoped to bring honor to their families by sacrificing themselves on their country's behalf. The poem reflects the psychological pull of dying honorably with the phrase “one-way / journey into history.” This describes the pilot’s flight, which is “into history” both because he is going to make a significant contribution to his country and because he will no longer be alive once his mission is complete—he himself will have become history.
The mention of the samurai sword in the cockpit further underscores the societal connection between honor and self-sacrifice/death. This sword brings to mind seppuku, a form of ritual suicide practiced by ancient samurai in order to, broadly speaking, restore honor to themselves and their families. The pilot's head is also notably full of “powerful incantations”—mental affirmations to help him complete his deadly task and reassure himself of the noble nature of what he's doing.
But as the pilot flies over the sea, he gets a bird's-eye view of everything he'll be leaving behind. The beauty of the “green-blue translucent” water and the “silver” shoals of fish trigger the pilot’s memories of his childhood. The pilot recalls playing on the beach with his brother, and fishing with his father. And these memories remind the pilot that it's not honor that gives his life meaning, but rather being with his loved ones. It's small, intimate moments with his family that grant him fulfillment, the poem suggests.
Of course, this realization stands in contrast to the kind of thinking behind the use of kamikaze pilots in the first place, which is that national duty outweighs personal desires. As such, things take a tragic turn when the pilot gets back to land. His wife and neighbors believe that, in failing to fulfill his duty, the pilot has cast shame on himself and by extension on his entire family. His wife freezes him out—denying him the very same love that motivated his decision in the first place. His neighbors won’t speak to him, and, over time, even his own children effectively disown him.
This captures the way that the pilot was in an impossible situation, having to choose between dying in supposed glory or wilting away from shame. This second “way to die” is a much slower death, and it's especially tragic because the pilot loses the very love he wanted to live for—such is the power of honor and societal shame. His children, too, essentially lose their father and his wife her husband; the conflict between love and honor, between personal desire and patriotic duty, has left everyone a little more alone.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-42
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Kamikaze”
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Lines 1-6
Her father embarked ...
... journey into history"Kamikaze" starts by launching straight into its story. The poem focuses on a Japanese fighter pilot. The pilot was on a kamikaze mission—which meant he was supposed to fly his plane directly into his target, thereby causing maximum damage and killing himself in the process. This poem imagines the moment that he changed his mind—how he longed to stay alive, and the subsequent fall-out of that decision.
His tale is told by his daughter, who starts off as a character in the poem, but at several points seems to be identical with the poem's speaker. The poem can also be interpreted as a story the daughter told to the poem's unidentified speaker, who now retells that story to the reader. Before even looking at the specifics of the story, then, the pilot is already a distanced figure—foreshadowing the way that he will be disowned by his family for acting dishonorably.
So, to the story itself. The pilot departs on his mission at sunrise, packing light because, of course, he isn't supposed to come back:
Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit ...The assonance of various /aw/ and /ah/ sounds here gives the lines a methodical sound that suggests preparation. As yet, the pilot is committed to his mission. The samurai sword—a traditional Japanese weapon—symbolizes the pilot's heroism and honor in (imminent) death. His head is shaven, suggesting a kind of purity brought about by the fact that he is about to die.
The pilot's head is described as "full of powerful incantations." Incantations are like spells or affirmations, the kind of thoughts that the pilot has to keep telling himself to help him actually go through with the kamikaze mission, which goes against his natural survival instinct. This suggests there is an element of faith required. Perhaps the pilot puts this faith in the value of the mission—that it's actually worth dying in order to aid his country's war effort.
"Full" in line 4 alliterates with "fuel" in line 5:
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-wayBoth relate to things that the pilot needs for his mission (actual fuel and the metaphorical fuel of motivation and commitment). Here, the poem presents the pilot's journey in metaphorical terms. He is flying "into history," both because he is wrapped in historical events of epic proportion (WWII) and because he is literally about to become part of the past tense—he is about to become history himself. Additionally, every line in this stanza is enjambed, suggesting the continuity of a journey and also, perhaps, the pilot's restless state of mind.
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Lines 7-12
but half way ...
... green-blue translucent sea -
Lines 13-18
and beneath them, ...
... towards the sun -
Lines 19-24
and remembered how ...
... father’s boat safe -
Lines 25-30
– yes, grandfather’s ...
... prince, muscular, dangerous. -
Lines 31-36
And though he ...
... chattered and laughed -
Lines 37-42
till gradually we ...
... way to die.
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“Kamikaze” Symbols
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The Samurai Sword
The samurai sword symbolizes the complex cultural expectations surrounding kamikaze pilots. Samurais were legendary Japanese warriors that existed from the 12th century till the late 1800s. They are world-renowned as figures of bravery and complex military social codes. Samurais practiced bushido, which translates as "the way of the warrior." The key principles of this "way" were righteousness, courage, compassion, respect, honesty, honor, duty/loyalty, and self-control. It's easy to see how these ideas come into play in the figure of the kamikaze pilot, particularly the last two. The pilot is supposed to exercise self-control over his desire to stay alive out of duty to his country. The presence of the samurai sword in the cockpit, then, is a physical reminder of the values that he is supposed to embody.
The mention of the samurai sword in particular also might make the reader think of seppuku, a form of ceremonial suicide practiced by samurai. Seppuku could be employed as a means for disgraced soldiers to regain their honor, as well as to avoid capture (it was in fact practiced as late as WWII, when some Japanese military leaders committed seppuku following the nation's defeat). Overall, the samurai sword thus reflects long-standing cultural associations between honor and death.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 2: “a samurai sword”
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“Kamikaze” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used sparingly throughout "Kamikaze."
An early example is in lines 4 and 5:
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-wayThe two /f/ sounds here both relate to things that the pilot needs with him for his mission: fuel and conviction (a head "full of powerful incantations"). Both words are also echoed in "powerful." The incantations—kind of like spells or affirmations—are meant to provide the pilot with the metaphorical fuel of the mind that will allow him to follow through with his suicide mission.
There is also some subtle alliteration in the following stanza. Though the words are on different lines, the shortness of these lines means that the /b/ sounds in this stanza chime together ("boats," "bunting," "green-blue"). "Strung" and "Sea" also ring out alliteratively, and the effect of all of these sounds is to give the stanza a kind of sonic sparkle to match with the visual beauty of what the pilot can see from his plane.
The sounds in the following stanza achieve a similar effect, with alliteration used in line 17 and 18, the end of stanza 3:
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sunAgain, this seems to brighten up the line, matching the poem's sound to the pilot's view.
Stanza four is full of alliteration. Line 21 uses /p/ sounds in "pearl-grey pebbles," which evoke the stacks of stones that the pilot and his brothers used to make. Later in the stanza, /b/ sounds convey the pilot's memory of his father's boat disrupting the water—causing "breakers" (which alliterates with "bringing" and "boat").
Though there is some alliteration in the last stanza, the final key instance is in line 36, the last line of stanza six. This stanza talks about the way that the pilot was disowned by his family because of the shame he brought on them by not completing his kamikaze mission. Accordingly, it is generally somber and sober in tone, contrasting with the vivid and lively language earlier in the poem. But there is one example of alliteration that stands out tonally, line 36: "only we children still chattered and laughed." There is a playful sound to this loud and clear alliteration, relating to the way that the children—unlike the adults—don't really care for the system of shame and honor that makes the pilot's life miserable. Unfortunately, as the next few lines reveal, they do learn "to be silent" and ignore his love.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 2: “samurai sword”
- Line 4: “full”
- Line 5: “fuel”
- Line 6: “history”
- Line 7: “half,” “there,” “thought”
- Line 8: “later”
- Line 9: “looked,” “far”
- Line 10: “fishing,” “boats”
- Line 11: “strung,” “bunting”
- Line 12: “blue,” “sea”
- Line 13: “beneath”
- Line 14: “flag,” “first”
- Line 15: “figure”
- Line 16: “fishes”
- Line 17: “flashing silver”
- Line 18: “swivelled,” “sun”
- Line 20: “brothers”
- Line 21: “built,” “pearl-grey pebbles”
- Line 23: “breakers”
- Line 24: “bringing,” “boat”
- Line 25: “boat,” “safe”
- Line 26: “salt-sodden”
- Line 27: “cloud-marked”
- Line 28: “crabs,” “prawns”
- Line 29: “whitebait,” “once”
- Line 30: “prince”
- Line 32: “mother”
- Line 33: “meet”
- Line 36: “children,” “chattered”
- Line 37: “learned”
- Line 38: “live”
- Line 39: “he had,” “that this”
- Line 40: “longer,” “loved”
- Line 41: “sometimes,” “said,” “wondered”
- Line 42: “which,” “been,” “better,” “way”
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Assonance
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Asyndeton
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Caesura
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Irony
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"Kamikaze" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Samurai Sword
- Incantations
- Bunting
- Shoals
- Cairns
- Turbulent Inrush
- Breakers
- Salt-Sodden
- Whitebait
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(Location in poem: Line 2: “samurai sword”)
The sword used by a samurai warrior, a legendary Japanese soldier with a strict code of honor and self-discipline.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Kamikaze”
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Form
"Kamikaze" uses sestets—six-line stanzas—from start to finish. Additionally, it's a narrative that can be divided into distinct sections: the first five stanzas and the last two. In the first section, the speaker (the kamikaze pilot's daughter) recounts the story of her father's mission—and how he must have come to change his mind about committing suicide to aid his country's war effort. Within the first section, the poem moves linearly—like a journey. It starts with the pilot's departure, before shifting to his view of the sea. It's this view that triggers a childhood memory, which is discussed in vivid detail in the fourth and fifth stanzas.
After these five stanzas, the last two deal specifically with the fallout when he turns back. These two stanzas compress decades of time into a few short phrases, outlining the way that the pilot's mid-air choice was a false one. That is, he thought he was choosing between life and death, and chose the former because of his instinctive love for family and life's beauty. In reality, his choice was between two different deaths—as the last two lines state so somberly.
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Meter
"Kamikaze" is written in free verse, and accordingly doesn't use a strict metrical scheme. This helps facilitate the way that the poem unfolds. The first five stanzas feel particularly fast, as though to mirror the intense speed of a fighter jet—and the pilot's troubled state of mind.
Interestingly, the poem does slip into the sound of regular meter right at the end. Here are the last line and a half without the line break:
he must | have wond- | ered which | had been | the bet- | ter way | to die.
The ending, then, unfolds with the steady sound of iambs (though it could easily go unnoticed given the lack of meter prior to this point). This gives the poem's conclusion a kind of resigned, melancholic sound, which certainly fits with what is actually being said. That is, the stateliness of this section has a kind of inevitable march to its sound—mirroring the way that everything that is being discussed is in the past, and there's nothing more that can be done about it.
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Rhyme Scheme
There is no rhyme scheme in "Kamikaze." The lack of rhyme fits with the poem's subject matter. The first section of the poem (the first five stanzas) uses the quickness of free verse and enjambment to convey both the fact that the pilot's decision takes place in a fighter jet mid-flight and the busy mind of the pilot as he comes to that decision.
That said, the poem does use assonance and consonance here and there in a manner similar to slant rhyme. These moments are relatively quiet, and happen about once per stanza.
In the first stanza, there is a subtle resonance between lines 4 and 5:
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-wayThe next instance is in stanza three, lines 14 and 15:
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,Similarly in the next stanza, lines 23-25:
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe– yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
Likewise lines 28-29 in the following stanza:
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and onceAnd in the following stanza:
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existedIn the final stanza:
was no longer the father we loved.
And sometimes, she said, he must have wonderedThese resonances between lines add to the poem's tumbling quality, so that the lines feel connected without ever pausing.
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“Kamikaze” Speaker
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The identity of the speaker is an interesting question in "Kamikaze." In a way, there are two. The whole poem is reported speech that belongs to the daughter of the kamikaze pilot in question. She is the "Her" that begins the poem. Her father's story is told many years later—perhaps even when she herself is an old woman. She certainly seems to empathize with her father now—though, as the final stanza outlines, there was a time when she learned not to.
Indeed, the poem is in part the daughter's effort to place herself in her father's position, and to try and get a sense of what it was like for him to confront the choice between life and death. Telling the story from her perspective allows the poem to underline the importance of family as a theme, with the speaker variously referring to her father, grandfather, mother, siblings, and neighbors.
But it's also true to say that, because this is reported speech, the daughter is not the actual speaker—or not always, anyway. The poem waffles between a third-person and a first-person perspective. The first-person moments seem to be the daughter speaking, while in the third-person the speaker becomes a removed narrator recounting what the daughter says.
There's no reason to treat this speech as unreliable, but it's worth acknowledging how this frame places one more stage of distance between the reader and the pilot. The pilot, of course, has no voice in this poem—he is long gone. The reader has to try to imagine what it was like for him through the prism of his daughter and the narrator, and this distance seems to have the purpose of foregrounding how difficult it actually is to know what it was like to face the pilot's dilemma.
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“Kamikaze” Setting
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On a very literal level, the poem takes place in Japan. More broadly, though, the poem is primarily set in the memory or imagination of the speaker, the pilot's daughter. Her account of her father's aborted kamikaze mission is detailed and well thought-out, suggesting that it is perhaps based in part on his own account. Within this construction of imagination and memory, the poem has three main settings.
The first of these is in the cockpit itself. The reader is put in the literal driving seat, and asked to imagine what it was like for the pilot, wrapped up in the animosities of World War II, to be tasked with flying his plane directly into an enemy warship. This allows the poem to consider the pilot's view, and how that would have informed his decision to turn back.
Indeed, it is because of this bird's-eye perspective that the poem moves into the second stage of its setting—the pilot's memory (which, it must be stressed, is told through the daughter's words, which are in turn reported to the reader by the poem itself). This memory is vivid and beautiful, detailing the pilot's childhood spent playing on the shore, waiting for his father to bring back that day's fishing haul. It's the vibrancy and warmth of this memory that makes the pilot turn back (as far as the reader can tell anyway).
Finally, the poem moves into its third setting—the years that followed the pilot's decision to turn back. The last two stanzas outline how his family practically disowned him because of his dishonorable actions. These stanzas give a sense of time passing, and how, during that time, the emotional distance between the pilot and his family never resolved.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Kamikaze”
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Literary Context
Beatrice Garland is a British poet. The poem, of course, is far removed from Garland's own immediate experience, and focuses on the plight of a Japanese kamikaze pilot during World War II. In terms of her own work, this is not unusual. Much of her writing similarly represents a kind of throwing of the voice, an attempt to imagine the world from someone else's perspective. In her own words, "I spend a lot of the day listening to other people's worlds."
It's worth comparing this poem with her other poems "A Private Life" and "A Kosovan Ghost Story," which similarly try to inhabit somebody else's voice. This particular approach is, of course, nothing new. But perhaps it is more hotly debated now than ever before. To what degree poets can write from other perspectives? How different can these perspectives be from the writer's own experience before such writing becomes irresponsible or insensitive? These questions form an important part of the discourses of contemporary poetry.
With its focus on the events of World War II, this poem should also be considered within the wider context of war poetry. War poets can, broadly speaking, be divided into those with direct experience—writers like Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves from WWI, or Keith Douglas and Anthony Hecht in World War Two—and those who weren't part of the actual conflict. Garland, of course, falls into the latter category, and it's worth comparing her poem with Owen Sheers's "Mametz Wood" and Ted Hughes's "Bayonet Charge" (indeed, this latter poem also looks directly at a soldier on his way into battle).
Historical Context
There are two key aspects to the historical context of "Kamikaze." The first of these is the general history of World War II. This was the second horrendous conflict that humankind inflicted on itself during the 20th century. Around four times as many people died in WWII compared to WWI—approximately 70 million.
The lead-up to WWII was long and complex, but put simplistically, it was based on the desire of Adolf Hitler to reinstate Germany's might following the harsh sanctions and limitations imposed on the country after WWI. After Germany invaded Poland in late 1939, Britain declared war on Germany and other countries followed suit. Japan was drawn into the conflict in 1940, when the country signed a pact with Nazi Germany. Emperor Hirohito consented to his government's decision to attack the Americans, soon resulting in the Pearl Harbor raid in December 1941. Japan subsequently occupied a number of territories in that part of the world, including Singapore and the Philippines. The war officially ended on September 2nd, 1945, with the surrender of Japan following the American's use of the atomic bomb.
The other main aspect to consider here is Japanese culture more widely. The kamikaze pilots' task—to fly direct into the enemy target—was built on social and military codes of honor and self-sacrifice. These had a lot to do with the samurai warrior tradition, as the presence of the "samurai sword / in the cockpit" suggests. Honor and shame are, generally speaking, important parts of Japanese culture. Indeed, they are so integral that the pilot's disgrace seems to disgrace those in his immediate circle as well, and is ultimately why they disown him.
Garland also draws a link between the kamikaze pilots and other suicide bombers:
They were of course the precursors of today’s suicide bombers, prepared to die for what they believed in. But there have been individuals willing to do that throughout history, even though we tend to think of it as a modern phenomenon. The young men driving lorries into crowds are virtually identical, with rather less technology at their disposal: they know they will die at the end of it.
Thus, her poem can be seen as an attempt to use history (kamikaze pilots) to understand our current moment as well, in which suicide bombers have become a pervasive threat.
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More “Kamikaze” Resources
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External Resources
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World War II Poetry — A valuable critical overview of WWII poets by the Poetry Foundation.
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Garland's Perspective — Garland discusses the poem in this short interview.
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Interview with Kamikaze Pilots — Garland's poem was in part inspired by this article, an interview with two kamikaze pilots.
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More Poems by Garland — A link to Garland's own website, which has a number of her poems up for reading.
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Shame and Honor — A fascinating essay that looks into the Japanese attitude towards shame and honor. The essay also focuses on bushido (which originated with the samurai warriors).
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