Empire of the Sun Summary: J. G. Ballard's Novel of a Boy Alone in Wartime Shanghai
What Empire of the Sun is about
Empire of the Sun is a 1984 novel by the English writer J. G. Ballard. It is historical fiction set in Shanghai and the Lunghua internment camp in China between 1941 and 1945. The book is a work of fiction, but it draws heavily on Ballard's own experiences as a boy during the Second World War. He had already used some of this material in an earlier short story, "The Dead Time", which appeared in the anthology Myths of the Near Future.
The story follows Jamie Graham, known as Jim, a young English boy living with his parents in Shanghai. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan occupies the Shanghai International Settlement. In the chaos that follows, Jim is separated from his mother and father.
Alone, he takes shelter in abandoned mansions. He survives on what is left of their packaged food. When the food runs out he decides to surrender to the Imperial Japanese Army. This proves harder than it sounds. It takes him many attempts before he succeeds. He is then interned in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre, where much of the novel takes place.
The title comes from the origin of the name for Japan, which is often explained as meaning the place where the sun rises. That choice says a lot. The book is told from inside the world Japan has made in occupied China, as a child experiences it.
The main characters
Jim Graham. The novel belongs to Jim. His name is a nod to the author, whose first names were James Graham. Jim is a boy cut off from everything he knows. He has to work out how to stay alive with no adult to guide him. He is resourceful and stubborn. He is also hard to pin down in his loyalties, and that is what makes him interesting.
Jim's parents. They matter most through their absence. Losing them sets the story in motion. The question of whether Jim will ever see them again hangs over the war years.
The Japanese pilots. Jim adores them and their aircraft. They are officially the enemy, yet they hold a powerful pull on his imagination. Their place in his mind shows how differently a child can see a war from the adults around him.
The themes
Survival. The book is first a story about staying alive. Jim scavenges food in empty houses and has to fight his way into a prison camp. Later he lives through hunger as supplies collapse. His survival depends on luck and on his own will. It rarely depends on anyone looking after him.
War seen by a child. Jim does not understand the war the way a history book would. He notices the aircraft and the routines of camp life. He weighs which places are safest. The novel uses this narrow, strange viewpoint to show war's confusion without explaining it away.
Identity. Jim is English, but he partly identifies with the Japanese. He admires their pilots and their machines. He also senses that Lunghua is a comparatively safer place for him than the world outside. The novel lets these mixed feelings stand. It asks what nationality and loyalty mean to a boy whose survival is the only thing that counts.
Coming of age. Jim enters the war as a sheltered child of a well-off family. He has to grow up fast and in the worst conditions. The book follows how those years change him.
How it ends (spoilers)
Stop here if you want to avoid the ending.
As the war draws to a close, the Japanese army is collapsing. Food in the camp runs short. People around Jim starve to death and he barely survives himself. The prisoners are forced on a march to Nantao, and many die along the way. Jim leaves the march. He is saved from starvation by air drops from American bombers. He then goes back to Lunghua camp. Soon afterwards he returns to his pre-war home and to his parents.
Why it still matters
Empire of the Sun was one of the most honoured British novels of its year. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It was later made into a film of the same name. Ballard wrote about his boyhood in China, and about the making of that film, in his autobiography Miracles of Life.
Part of its lasting power lies in the closeness between author and hero. Ballard gave Jim his own first names and built the story on his own memories. The result reads with unusual authority about a corner of the Second World War that many readers know little about.
The book suits readers of historical fiction and anyone interested in the war in Asia. It will also appeal to readers who like stories of survival against the odds. It rewards those who are happy with a hero whose loyalties are uncertain and whose view of events is far from the official one.
