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Kiodomari Allan

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

Most widely used pen-name of Yukie Mizushima (1910-2008), a Japanese author and interpreter, also sometimes credited variously as Aran Kyōdomari, Tarō Mizushima, Ribō, Zeo Kiodomari and Tarō Urashima. The son of the painter and author Niō Mizushima (1884-1958), Kiodomari was born with strong affinities to Japan's intellectual, modernist and artistic communities. A renowned polyglot, supposedly conversant to some extent in thirty languages, he also created his own, Heresugo, which he used in some of his genre works (see Linguistics). A monocled eccentric and suspected anarchist, he led an adventurous early life, including being deported from Germany in the early 1930s, where the would-be scholar had arrived after stowing away on the Trans-Siberian railway at Harbin, China. Mizushima dropped out of Tokyo's Sophia University partway through a language degree.

For such a child prodigy in languages, Kiodomari came relatively late to fiction, when Haruo Satō selected his story "Sakurada Mon" ["The Gate of Cherryfields"] (1953 Bungei Nippon) as by Takayanagi Mizushima for a literary journal. He eventually found kindred spirits in early Japanese sf Fandom, and was one of the earliest contributors to Takumi Shibano's influential Uchūjin. In collaboration with Tetsu Yano and Keisuke Watanabe, he formed Japan's first SF fan group, the "Omega Club", in 1957 and published the fanzine Kagaku Shōsetsu ["Science Novels"]. Owing to a feud with Masami Fukushima, the founding editor of S-F Magazine, Kiodomari's work did not appear in Japan's other primary journal of sf record until the 1970s.

He is best remembered for Hikari no Tō ["The Spires of Light"] (1962) in which Earth is attacked in 2011 by unknown invaders, who construct mysterious glowing towers all around the world. Human resistance fighters eventually discover that the attackers are human refugees who have come via Time Travel from the End of the World after a nuclear Future War, and whose drastic actions constitute a desperate attempt to alter the time continuum. Late in his life, Kiodomari would revisit the milieu with a story set 30 years later, Waga Tsuki wa Midori ["Our Moon is Green"] (February 1987-December 1990 S-F Magazine). [JonC]

Yukie Mizushima

born Japan: 28 July 1910

died Japan: 12 May 2008

works

  • Hikari no Tō ["The Spires of Light"] (Tokyo: Tōto Shobō, 1962) [binding unknown/]
  • Saishū Sensō ["The Final War"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1974) [binding unknown/]
  • Hyōbyōdan ["Boundless Tales"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1977) [coll: binding unknown/]
  • Androbot 99 (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1977) [binding unknown/]
  • Poseidonia Kara Kita Otoko ["The Man From Poseidonia"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1978) [coll: binding unknown/]
  • Kaijū Tairiku ["Monster Continent"] (Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1980) [binding unknown/]
  • Uchū-hei Monogatari ["Space Soldier Stories"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1982) [coll: binding unknown/]
  • Hyōga 0-nen ["Glacier Year Zero"] (Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1982) [binding unknown/]
  • Waga Tsuki wa Midori ["Our Moon is Green"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1991) [in two volumes: binding unknown/]
  • Schubert (Tokyo: Kyōsei, 1995) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
  • Maboroshi Kitan ["Mysterious Yarns"] (Tokyo: Shuppan Geijutsu-sha, 2003) [coll: hb/]

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